Vince Westbrook

Vince Westbrook has become an icon in the Collegiate Tennis World during his tenure as the director of tennis and head men’s coach at The University of Tulsa. He also serves as senior associate athletic director.

Westbrook has guided the Tulsa tennis programs to numerous conference championships and NCAA tournament appearances, was instrumental in the building of the Michael D. Case Tennis Center, brought three NCAA Division I Tennis Championships to the Case Center and the city of Tulsa (2004, 2008 and 2016), landed the ITA Men’s All-American Fall Championship in 2005, and in 2019 the Women’s ITA All-American Championship will be played in Tulsa following 34 years at the Riviera Country Club in California.

The event is now called the St. Francis Health System ITA All-American Championships. The men’s event is in its 15th season in Tulsa.

The 2019-20 campaign is the 29th for Westbrook at Tulsa. During his tenure, he has built one of the top tennis programs in the nation, settling for nothing but the best in establishing a winning tradition at Tulsa in both men’s and women’s tennis. Westbrook’s vision and guidance have yielded national rankings, regional honors and conference merits for both Golden Hurricane teams and players.

Westbrook is the program’s all-time winningest coach, compiling a 427-323 (.569) record at TU. He turned over the head coaching responsibilities with the women’s team in 1998 after compiling an overall 52-64 mark, the third-most wins for a Tulsa women’s head coach. Westbrook has led Tulsa to 18 NCAA Tournament appearances, won nine conference championships and has coached 12 All-Americans and six Central Region Champions. He was named the 1997 and 1999 Region V Coach of the Year, the 2008 Wilson/ITA Central Region Coach of the Year, and 2006, ’08, ’09 and ‘11 Conference USA Coach of the Year.

His 2011 and 2012 teams advanced to the NCAA Sweet Sixteen after capturing two wins at the reginal competition each year.

Conference championships for Tulsa men’s tennis under Westbrook have come in 1994-95 and 1995-96 as members of the Missouri Valley Conference, while the Hurricane won Conference USA titles in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2014. The 2014-15 season was the first for Tulsa as members of the American Athletic Conference, and en route to an overall 18-13 record and second-place league finish, the Hurricane turned in the biggest win in school history with a 4-3 win over No.1-ranked Southern Cal, while also capturing a 4-3 win over No. 10-ranked Ohio State.

Under Westbrook’s guidance, Tulsa claimed its first female All-America tennis player when Anousjka van Exel (1997-99) won a school single season record 42 matches and defeated two opponents in the 1998 NCAA Singles Championship to gain All-America status. In that same year, on the men’s side, Louie Pranic (1995-98) and Gareth Williams (1996-99) received All-America honors as a doubles tandem with victories over Arkansas’ third-ranked doubles team and Virginia Tech’s 28th-ranked doubles team at the NCAA Doubles Championship.

A year later, Williams and Nenad Toroman (1996-2000) finished as the national doubles runner-up after winning four doubles matches at the 1999 NCAA Doubles Championships.
In 2003, Ryan Livesay (2001-03) and Dustin Taylor (2001-04) earned All-America status as they advanced to the quarterfinals of the NCAA Doubles Championship. In 2008, Andy Connelly (2004-08) and Ross Cunningham (2004-09) earned doubles All-America status after advancing to the quarterfinals of the NCAA Championships, marking the fourth doubles team in school history to be named All-Americans.

Westbrook was instrumental in coaching TU’s first male All-America singles player, Arnau Brugues (2005-09). The four-time All-American posted a school-best 44-4 singles record in 2009 and also spent a total of 11 weeks as the No. 1-ranked singles player by the ITA that season. In 2012, Tulsa’s top doubles duo featuring Ashley Watling (2008-12) and current men’s assistant coach/recruiting coordinator Clifford Marsland (2010-14) became the fifth doubles team to earn All-America honors. The following season, Japie De Klerk (2010-14) became the program’s first player to reach the semifinals of the NCAA Tournament en route to All-America accolades.

Tulsa tennis has been on the national map as one of the top collegiate tennis programs in the country shortly after Westbrook took over the program in 1991, making the schools’ first NCAA Tournament appearance in the 1994-95 season.

Westbrook earned a psychology degree from Southeastern Oklahoma State University in 1987. He and his wife, Mary, have three children: sons Vincent II and Patrick, and daughter Mary.