Sept. 24, 2013
Quito, Ecuador – Former Georgia Tech doubles partners Kevin King and Juan Spir won their first ATP Challenger Tour title last weekend, winning the doubles championship at the $35,000 ATP Quito Challenger.
The Yellow Jacket All-Americans, unseeded in the event, knocked off the fourth-seeded team of Christopher Diaz-Figueroa (Guatemala) and Carlos Salamanca (Colombia), 7-5, 6-7, 11-9, in the finals. This was their first Challenger Tour title after having won a pair of Future Tour events.
Read championship match recap in Spanish
King and Spir, the top doubles tandem in Georgia Tech history with 66 victories and a pair of NCAA Championship appearances together, made it to the finals of the clay court event with surprising ease. They defeated Mauricio Echazu (Peru) and Guillermo Rivera-Aranguiz (Chile), 7-6, 6-1, in the first round, then advanced to the semifinals in a walk-over against the top seeded team of Joao Souza (Brazil) and Eduardo Struvay (Colombia).
Then came a 6-3, 7-5 win over Emilio Gomez (Ecuador) and Sebastian Exequiel Pini (Argentina) in the semifinals to set up the championship thriller.
Spir, from Medellin, Colombia, amassed 103 doubles wins in four years at Tech, surpassing the previous school record of 90 set by King, who hails from Peachtree City, Ga. They qualified for and won a first-round match in the BB&T Atlanta Open in Atlanta in June.
Both players qualified for and played in the singles draw as well. Spir beat No.232 Facundo Arguello in the first round and No. 483 Ignacio Londero in the second round, both in straight sets, before falling 7-6, 7-6 to the eventual champion, Victor Estrella Burgos (No. 271) of the Dominican Republic, in the quarterfinals. King lost his first-round match, 7-6, 7-5, to Italy’s Gianluigi Quinzi.
