Darian King

Darian King (born 26 April 1992 in Bridgetown) is a Barbadian tennis player. He has a career-high Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) singles ranking of world No. 106 achieved on 8 May 2017, and a career-high ATP doubles ranking of No. 156 achieved on 21 October 2019. He has represented Barbados at the Davis Cup and at the 2016 Olympics. His first Grand Slam appearance came at the 2017 US Open, where he lost to fourth seed Alexander Zverev in straight sets.

King was born on April 26, 1992, in Bridgetown, Barbados, where he currently resides. His father played field hockey and his mother played net ball and died of pancreatic cancer in 2010. He has 3 siblings; 2 brothers and 1 sister. One of the brothers, Christopher, is King's current head coach. He is good friends with many tennis players Frances Tiafoe, Dustin Brown, Noah Rubin, Taylor Townsend, and Sloane Stephens. His favorite athlete is Usain Bolt.

King began playing tennis at the age of 8 and grew up idolizing Gaël Monfils, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, and Dustin Brown (now good friends with King). He played his first junior match in April 2006 at the age of 13 at a grade 4 tournament in Barbados. During his junior career, King made both the singles and doubles draw in 3 of the 4 boys grand slams in 2010 where he failed to make it past the first round once in the singles and made it to the second round twice in the doubles. In one tournament, he defeated future world No. 3 and 2020 US Open champion Dominic Thiem. He ended his junior career with a high ranking of 47 in both the singles and the doubles (both attained on January 4, 2010) and a record of 78–47 in singles and 81–35 in doubles.

Junior Grand Slam results – Singles:

Australian Open: A (-)
French Open: 1R (2010)
Wimbledon: 1R (2010)
US Open: 1R (2010)

Junior Grand Slam results – Doubles:

Australian Open: A (-)
French Open: 2R (2010)
Wimbledon: 2R (2010)
US Open: 1R (2010)

King officially turned pro in 2010 at the age of 17. He was considering on playing college tennis at UCLA but made the decision to turn pro instead. Between 2011 and 2016, King would go on to make 22 ITF futures finals, winning 13 of them. The first one of those titles was at a M25 tournament in Manzanillo in 2012. These results would continuously improve his year-end ranking.