In 2021, Tennis Acumen interviewed American Evan King at the Champaign Challenger tournament. Here is a part of that conversation:
Tennis Acumen: How did you get started playing tennis?
Evan King: For me, I was just born at a time when my dad was obsessed with the sport. Yeah, he was super, super into it. I've got an older brother who would take me around and just throw us balls, hit back and forth. I actually started playing a lot at the same club that Donald Young was playing at, as well. My brother's a little bit older than Donald. They grew up playing with each other and I was always around. So, I've been playing pretty much as long as I can remember. My family has videos and pictures of me as a toddler, just running around with a racket.
Tennis Acumen: So, it was a natural. When it came to going pro, did you get support from your family?
Evan King: Their big thing was for me to finish college, which I did. So, I graduated University of Michigan and then, after that, they supported me in terms of what I wanted to do. And as long as I had a degree, they thought it was worthwhile. And I had a good enough college career where it merited the ability to go pro.
Tennis Acumen: And so, they could see it was a reasonable thing to do.
Evan King: Yeah, for sure. So, they definitely had my back on it, which was awesome. And then pretty soon after, I was doing well enough where I was breaking even. I trained a lot at Michigan. I was a volunteer assistant when I wasn't on the road, I was teaching lessons there to pay for a lot of the stuff as well. So yeah, it was it was pretty cool.
More of this exclusive interview is available at Tennis Acumen. Go to the interviews category, shown on the upper right hand side of the screen.
Tags: @EvanKingChicago
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