The 21st century
United States · born Monterey Park, California, 1989 · Wimbledon doubles champion 2010 with Yaroslava Shvedova, unseeded
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2010
Wimbledon doubles champion with Yaroslava Shvedova, unseeded
2
Grand Slam doubles titles in 2010: Wimbledon and the US Open
15
WTA doubles titles
3
Career-high doubles ranking, June 2011
2
Weeks the pair had played together before Wimbledon 2010
Vania King was born in Monterey Park, California, on 3 February 1989, the youngest of four children of parents who had moved to the United States from Taiwan. Her father coached her and her elder brother Phillip, a top junior who played at Duke. She turned professional in 2006 instead of going to college, and that autumn won her only WTA singles title, in Bangkok, and reached her best singles ranking of No. 50.
Her career was built in doubles. With the Kazakh Yaroslava Shvedova she won Wimbledon and the US Open in 2010 and reached the US Open final again in 2011; she rose to No. 3 in June 2011 and won 15 tour doubles titles in all. She also reached the French Open mixed final in 2009 with Marcelo Melo.
She planned to retire in 2020, but the pandemic intervened, and she played her last tournament in Charleston in April 2021. She has since worked with WTA Charities on a tennis and legal aid clinic for young people in Uganda.
| Wimbledon 2010 final | Unseeded with Shvedova; beat Elena Vesnina and Vera Zvonareva 7-6 (8-6), 6-2 on Centre Court in 94 minutes |
|---|---|
| Build-up, 2010 | In their first weeks together the pair reached the semi-finals at Birmingham and the final at 's-Hertogenbosch, losing to Alla Kudryavtseva and Anastasia Rodionova 6-3, 3-6, 6-10 in a match tiebreak |
| Other grass | Wimbledon doubles quarter-finalist 2009. Birmingham doubles final 2016 with Alla Kudryavtseva, lost to KarolÃna PlÃÅ¡ková and Barbora Strýcová 3-6, 6-7 (1-7) |
| Wimbledon | ||
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | Women's doubles | with Yaroslava Shvedova |
Leading grass titles only: the grass majors, tour-level grass events since 1968 and the leading grass championships before 1968. †single source; ‡ sources disagree. Roll of champions
"When we won Wimbledon, it was out of nowhere. Nobody expected it."
The person behind the player.
Grass season, 2010
King asked Shvedova to play doubles for the grass season only. After the final in 's-Hertogenbosch, Shvedova joked that they would win the next one. "It was a joke, but it came true," she said.
Source: WTA, 7 April 2021Wimbledon, 2010
Shvedova's bags had been stolen the week before, so she played Wimbledon with two racquets bought at the pro shop and no racquet bag.
Source: WTA, 7 April 2021Wimbledon, 2010
At a party on the middle Saturday King met students from the Royal Ballet School and invited them to watch. "At every subsequent match, we had more and more ballet dancers coming to watch," she said. By the final their box held about 20 people.
Source: WTA, 7 April 2021Wimbledon, 2010
The pair went to a pub during the tournament. "In all fairness, it was the World Cup," King said.
Source: WTA, 7 April 2021Growing up
She said her parents "didn't raise me to be an American child" but "to be a Taiwanese child", and she visits Taiwan most years. Her father, who coached her, was "pretty hard on" her, and she stopped working with him the week before she turned professional.
Source: TaiwaneseAmerican.org, August 2013Free membership: player news, the grass court Atlas, the rankings and the grass season calendar.
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