You are excused if you look at the current ATP men’s doubles live rankings and do a double take. Yes, that’s the tandem of Evan King and Ryan Harrison sitting at No. 3 as they continue their rapid rise this weekend in Tennis Paradise. 

King and Harrison, a newly formed tandem that is contesting their fifth career tour-level event as a pair, and their first Masters 1000 event together, have been a screaming success so far in 2025. 

They first connected last year, playing a couple of challenger events at the end of the season when both of their regular partners had already called it a year. 

“It was just timing, honestly,” King told BNPParibasOpen.com on Wednesday, after he and Harrison reached the semifinals with a 7-6(4), 6-3 victory over seventh-seeded Andres Molteni and Maximo Gonzalez. “At the end of last year we wanted to play two more weeks at the end of the season and our normal partners were done for the season. 

“We played two challenger events and reached the final of the first one and won the second one.” 

King and Harrison didn’t play the Australian Open together, but they linked up in Europe to play their first ATP event together in Montpellier, France at the end of January. A first-round loss didn’t stop them from trying again. They went to the Dallas Open to enter qualifying, and that’s when the pairing hit light speed. 

One month later King, 32, and Harrison, 30, have raised two ATP 500 trophies and surged up the rankings. They claimed the title in Dallas without dropping a set, and after reaching the final at Delray Beach in the following week, they headed south of the border to triumph in Acapulco, again without dropping a single set. 

“Just playing well, just enjoying, honestly just playing tennis and not thinking about too much,” Harrison, a Louisiana native and the younger brother of former singles World No.40 Ryan Harrison, says. 

Harrison says he always wanted to play with King, but the pair never got around to formalizing the connection until now. 

“We tried to play together for a long time, it just didn’t work out,” he said. “I missed some time with injuries, but we’ve been friends our whole lives pretty much.” 

So how have King and Harrison, who face the top-seeded pairing of Marcelo Arevalo and Mate Pavic in the semifinals, managed to look like world-beaters in such rapid fashion?

“Christian is an unbelievable player and we’re meshing really well right now,” Chicago native King says. “He is a phenomenal tennis player and we communicate really effortlessly and seamlessly. It’s very easy to make adjustments mid-match – I trust his tennis mind, I think he trusts my mind as well, so it’s like a super healthy back-and-forth when we’re on the court trying to make moves to win and so far it’s happening.” 

What does Harrison enjoy about King’s game? 

“Pretty much everything,” he says. “It’s just how our games flow together. It helps just winning matches and just being on the court a lot.” 

Is King surprised about the success they’ve had so far? He stops to take selfies with a few fans during a walk-and-talk before answering. 

“Maybe it’s a pleasant surprise that it is clicking pretty fast, but I don’t think both of us would still be playing if we didn’t have high expectations for ourselves individually and as a pair. I think we both believed that we could play at this level and now it’s just a little bit about sustaining it and going to work every day like we have been and hopefully more good things will happen.” 

And what to make of the current live ranking, and the fact that reaching this year’s ATP Finals in Turin as one of the world’s top eight doubles pairings is becoming a possibility? 

“It’s cool for sure, but there’s so much season to be had,” the current World No.40 says. “As of right now from a ranking standpoint, I don’t think we’ll even be into Monte-Carlo, so that part is a little bit difficult, but it’s cool for sure. We’re taking it one match at a time and having fun with it.”