Though he competed in college two miles away at Georgia Tech, Kevin King still felt like he was at home on Monday at the BB&T Atlanta Open at Atlantic Station.
King, a former All-American at Tech, posted the biggest win of his professional career, knocking off Kennesaw’s Robby Ginepri 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 to advance to his first main draw on the ATP World Tour. King will play Yen-Hsun Lu at 3 p.m. Tuesday.
“This is the best place it can happen,” King said. “I’ve had a lot of fans out there.”
King, No. 790 in the ATP world rankings, has played mostly this year on the ITF Futures Tour, pro tennis’ third level, since finishing his career at Tech in the spring of 2012 with an 80-41 singles record and a degree in mechanical engineering.
Selected as a qualifier for the Atlanta Open for the third consecutive year, King won two weekend matches to reach Monday’s final qualifier and Ginepri, a player King said he looked up to while growing up.
King said he couldn’t estimate how many friends and family members were in the crowd supporting him. Sean Ferreira, who has coached King since he was a 5-year-old in Peachtree City, was on hand and liked what he saw.
“He’s been working hard on it,” Ferreira said. “I’ve always thought he’s had the weapons to play at a high level. It’s just putting it together and doing it consistently.”
King started slowly against Ginepri. He lost the first set because Ginepri played well to open and King made too many unforced errors. Ferreira and Kenny Thorne, who coached King at Tech, said they thought he may have been too amped up in front of the home crowd.
King said he began to settle down and get his “teeth into it” early in the second set when rain hit, delaying the match by 1 1/2 hours.
When they resumed, King reduced his errors and began to put points together with his groundstrokes, something Ferreira said King has worked to improve this year.
“Then it became a battle,” Thorne said. “It was a very mature match for Kevin. He knows the right things, but to do it here in his hometown … it was good to see.”
King will get another chance to impress friends and family when he teams up with former Tech partner Juan Spir in the doubles bracket. They will face Edouard Roger-Vasselin and Igor Sijsling, the fourth seeds, in a first-round match.
As King posted his career win, another Atlanta resident continued his up-and-down tennis journey.
Donald Young, 23, failed to advance to the main draw after a 7-5, 7-6 (3) loss to Tim Smyczek.
Young entered the 2012 Atlanta Open as the No. 58 player in the ATP’s world rankings but failed to make it past the first round. He entered this year’s Atlanta Open ranked No. 154. The year in between has been a challenge.
Young went 5-24 in 2012 after reaching a high of No. 39 in the rankings at the end of 2011. He went 5-24 in 2012 and plummeted to No. 190 by end of the year.
He has been playing this year mostly on the Challenger Tour, a step below the ATP World Tour, in what has been an ace-double fault experience. He was not available for comment afterwards.
He won in Leon, Mexico, in April, but lost his first match in each of the next two tournaments. He bounced back to reach the semifinals in Savannah and the quarterfinals in Tallahassee, Nottingham (Great Britain) and Winnetka, Ill., but lost his first-round match last week in Binghamton, N.Y.
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