The men's tennis team now has a King of the courts in what should be the program's crown jewel season.
During the second day of his two-day official visit to campus yesterday, Phillip King, one of the top amateurs in the world, told The Chronicle he will attend Duke in January and play tennis for the Blue Devils this spring.
"Yeah, definitely," King replied, when asked if he would be on coach Jay Lapidus' roster come January.
A product of Long Beach Poly High School in Southern California, King has worked his way into the ATP Tour's top 300 and has qualified for the U.S. Open each of the past two years. He said his mind was made up about coming to Duke as early as September, but a packed tournament schedule made it impossible for him to matriculate into the University with his freshman class this fall.
"I have been home one day since September and I have been in the U.S. one week since September," said King, who has set as his two goals to graduate from Duke and to one day move his top-300 Tour ranking into the top 10. "We needed a little extra time and we got a lot of things solved and ready."
King's one week in the States were spent in Houston, a moderate four-hour flight from his hometown in Long Beach compared to the whirlwind tour of international cities his fall hasincluded. Yesterday, after spending fewer than 48 hours on campus, King hopped on a plane as he readies for a trip to Yokohama. After that, he will compete in Seoul and then in Osaka.
Already this fall, since leaving New York after a nailbiting Aug. 29 straight-set loss to Romania's Andrei Pavel in the first round of the U.S. Open, King has made his way through Hong Kong, Tokyo and, most recently, Shanghai.
But there's one place he wanted to see more than any other.
"I flew halfway around the world to be here for two days," King said with a smile.
Some of his hometown friends were quick to question King's choice of colleges, especially with tennis powerhouses UCLA and Pepperdine right in his backyard, not to mention defending national champion Stanford a mere hop, skip and a jump up the California coastline.
Most of his Long Beach peers chose one of those schools, especially Stanford, a team King feels he knows like the back of his hand. Few of them understood why he picked Duke, but, should you have the chance to ask him, he'll gladly give you one or two (hundred) possible explanations.
"I could go down the list of maybe 30 or 40 reasons why I chose Duke," said King, who was quick to point out that most people stop him before he can finish reciting his list.
"I'd get halfway through my list and they're like, 'I see it, I understand,'" he said.
Like many non-revenue athletes at the University, King's list begins with academics. More than a year and a half ago, before he knew anything about the Blue Devils-not even the name of their coach-King had already set his sights on possibly attending Duke not because of the program's national ranking, but because of the University's.
Since those long-forgotten early years of high school, King has learned more than a few things about Lapidus and the players who will soon be his teammates. Last January, at a tournament in Florida, he met top-returning Blue Devil Ramsey Smith, who quickly landed himself on King's infamous list.
"I really, really like Ramsey and Andres [Pedroso] a lot; that was one of the main reasons within the sub-reasons that I chose Duke," King said of Duke's senior leaders. "I feel like every single day they work hard, they're honest, they trust you and when you're out on the court, they'll support you genuinely."
It is out on the concrete courts of the Duke Tennis Stadium that King plans on lifting the Blue Devils, who have never advanced past the NCAA quarterfinals in program history, to a national championship.
King, who expects his individual national ranking to begin as high as top 10, will likely fill the team's No. 1 spot vacated by Doug Root, who graduated from Duke last spring. Although on any given day Root could dethrone basically any player in the nation, he won only seven of the 19 matches he played at No. 1 last season.
That percentage figures to increase significantly with King's experience in professional tournaments leading the way. And if it does, King believes his peers at Stanford will have one more reason to add to his list.
"I know their team, and I know our team is better," King said of the Cardinal program that has won 17 national championships.
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