Alex Kim

Education

Stanford University.

Career

In the 1996 United States Open, Kim and Mexico"s Mariano Sánchez made the boy"s doubles semi-finals, where they lost to the Bryan brothers. He began playing collegiate tennis in 1998, for Stanford University. He and teammate Geoff Abrams formed the top-ranked doubles team in the nation in 2000, and were named the Industry Training Authority National Doubles Team of the Year.

He was inducted into the Stanford Athletic Hall of Fame in 2011.

Given a wildcard entry, Kim made his first Grand Slam appearance in 2000, at the United States Open. He had the misfortune of being drawn against world number one Andre Agassi in the first round and lost in straight sets.

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 Gonzalez.

He also played at the United States Open in 2002, but lost in the first round to Greg Rusedski.

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 United States 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 Rios, in a match decided by two tiebreaks. As a doubles player, Kim competed in the 2002 United States Open with Kevin Kim (who is of no relation) and with Jeff Salzenstein in the 2003 United States Open.

He and his partner lost in the first round of each. Singles: (3)

Doubles: (1).

Achievements

• In the latter year he also won the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division 1 singles title and was an All-American. 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. In Washington"s Legg Mason Tennis Classic that year, he claimed a win over another big name player, 10th seed Todd Martin.

Membership

The American was a member of the championship winning Stanford sides of 1998 and 2000.