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Alex Kim

American tennis player (born 1978)

Alex Kim (born December 20, 1978) is a professional tennis player from the United States.

01Early career

In the 1996 US Open, Kim and Mexico's Mariano Sánchez made the boys' doubles semi-finals, where they lost to the Bryan brothers.

He began playing collegiate tennis in 1998, for Stanford University. The American was a member of the championship winning Stanford sides of 1998 and 2000. In the latter year, he also won the NCAA Division 1 singles title and was an All-American. He and teammate Geoff Abrams formed the top-ranked doubles team in the nation in 2000, and were named the ITA National Doubles Team of the Year. He was inducted into the Stanford Athletic Hall of Fame in 2011.

02ATP Tour

Given a wildcard entry, Kim made his first Grand Slam appearance in 2000, at the US Open. He had the misfortune of being drawn against world number one Andre Agassi in the first round and lost in straight sets. In June 2000, he won the doubles title with Geoff Abrams at the USTA Chandler Cup Futures.

The next time that he played in a Grand Slam event, the 2002 Australian Open, he put in the best performance of his career, starting with an opening round win over Davide Sanguinetti. Despite being ranked outside of the world's top 200, Kim managed to defeat fourth seed Yevgeny Kafelnikov in the second round, without dropping a set. In the third round, he was eliminated by the only other qualifier remaining in the draw, Fernando González.

He also played at the US Open in 2002, but lost in the first round to Greg Rusedski. In Washington's Legg Mason Tennis Classic that year, he claimed a win over another big name player, 10th seed Todd Martin. He was unable to get past Jarkko Nieminen in the round of 16.

In 2003, he played in three Grand Slam tournaments, but lost in the opening round of each. He was beaten by Scott Draper in the Australian Open, squandered a two set lead in losing to Mark Philippoussis in the French Open and was defeated by Younes El Aynaoui in the US Open.

Kim was a joint bronze medalist in the men's singles event at the 2003 Pan American Games, which were held in the Dominican Republic. He lost in the semi-finals to Marcelo Ríos, in a match decided by two tiebreaks.

As a doubles player, Kim competed in the 2002 US Open with Kevin Kim (who is of no relation) and with Jeff Salzenstein in the 2003 US Open. He and his partner lost in the first round of each.

03ATP Challenger and ITF Futures finals

Singles: 9 (4-5)

Legend
ATP Challenger (3-3)
ITF Futures (1-2)
Finals by surface
Hard (3-3)
Clay (1-2)
Grass (0-0)
Carpet (0-0)
Result W-L Date Tournament Tier Surface Opponent Score
Win 1-0 Jun 2000 USA F15, Berkley Futures Hard Scott Barron 6-3, 7-5
Loss 1-1 Dec 2000 USA F29, Laguna Niguel Futures Hard Justin Bower 5-7, 0-6
Loss 1-2 Jun 2001 USA F15, Sunnyvale Futures Hard Robby Ginepri 4-6, 3-6
Win 2-2 Oct 2001 Kerrville, United States Challenger Hard Mardy Fish 6-3, 3-6, 6-4
Win 3-2 May 2002 Birmingham, United States Challenger Clay Cecil Mamiit 7-6(11-9), 6-2
Loss 3-3 May 2002 Rocky Mount, United States Challenger Clay Robby Ginepri 3-6, 4-6
Loss 3-4 May 2003 Birmingham, United States Challenger Clay Óscar Hernández 2-6, 1-6
Loss 3-5 Jun 2003 Tallahassee, United States Challenger Hard Paul Goldstein 6-2, 2-6, 0-4 ret.
Win 4-5 Oct 2003 Fresno, United States Challenger Hard Jeff Morrison 7-5, 7-6(8-6)

Doubles: 3 (2-1)

Legend
ATP Challenger (1-1)
ITF Futures (1-0)
Finals by surface
Hard (2-1)
Clay (0-0)
Grass (0-0)
Carpet (0-0)
Result W-L Date Tournament Tier Surface Partner Opponents Score
Win 1-0 Jun 2000 USA F15, Berkley Futures Hard Geoff Abrams Fazaluddin Syed
Ben-Qiang Zhu
6-2, 7-5
Loss 1-1 Jan 2000 Waikoloa, United States Challenger Hard Levar Harper-Griffith Diego Ayala
Robert Kendrick
6-4, 6-7(2-7), 2-6
Win 2-1 Sep 2003 Seoul, South Korea Challenger Hard Lee Hyung-taik Alex Bogomolov Jr
Jeff Salzenstein
1-6, 6-1, 6-4

04Performance timeline

Key
W  F  SF QF #R RRQ# DNQ A NH

Singles

Tournament20002001200220032004SRW-LWin%
Grand Slam tournaments
Australian Open A A 3R 1R Q1 0 / 2 2-2 50%
French Open A A Q2 1R Q2 0 / 1 0-1 0%
Wimbledon A A A Q1 A 0 / 0 0-0  ,  
US Open 1R Q1 1R 1R A 0 / 3 0-3 0%
Win-loss 0-1 0-0 2-2 0-3 0-0 0 / 6 2-6 25%
ATP World Tour Masters 1000
Indian Wells A A A A Q2 0 / 0 0-0  ,  
Miami A A Q1 Q2 Q1 0 / 0 0-0  ,  
Canada A A 1R A A 0 / 1 0-1 0%
Cincinnati Q1 A Q1 A A 0 / 0 0-0  ,  
Win-loss 0-0 0-0 0-1 0-0 0-0 0 / 1 0-1 0%

Doubles

Watch videos about Alex KimExplainers and documentaries on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article Alex Kim, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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