There was a time when Jack Sock appeared destined to become Andy Roddick’s successor as the next great American champion. Born in Nebraska like Roddick, Sock won the US Open boy’s singles championship in 2010, the first American to claim the junior title since Roddick captured the crown a decade earlier. In 2016, Sock attained the same lofty position in American tennis that Roddick held for many years by establishing himself as the nation’s No. 1 player.
But try as he might, Sock, who reached a career high of No. 8 in 2017, hasn’t been able to match Roddick’s signal achievement: winning the US Open men’s singles championship. Roddick won the title in 2003 and reached the US Open final again three years later.
Sock, on the other hand, has been beset by various setbacks and injuries during his career, including surgeries to his hip and thumb. In early 2020, he saw his ranking plummet to a low of No. 768. Eventually, he was healthy enough to begin putting in big blocks of training and has now, at age 28, battled back to a ranking of No. 184. Shortly before the 2021 US Open began, he was one of seven American men to receive a main draw wild card into the tournament.
The 2021 US Open marks the 12th time in his career Sock is playing in the main draw. He has yet to advance past the fourth round, but that can change this Labor Day weekend, when he not only can match his career-best at the US Open by upsetting No. 4 seed Alexander Zverev in tonight’s third-round matchup; he can even go one better by producing a Round of 16 victory on Monday against the winner of today’s match between No. 13 seed Jannik Sinner and No. 17 seed Gael Monfils.
Should Sock accomplish all that, he will be in position to continue his pursuit of a truly remarkable record. It is a record, in fact, that no other player, past or present, has come close to: capturing a championship in all four US Open events that a player can enter—juniors, singles, doubles and mixed doubles—plus an Olympic gold medal.
A year after winning the US Open junior title, Sock in 2011 teamed up with Melanie Oudin to capture the US Open mixed doubles championship. He won the mixed doubles gold medal with Bethanie Mattek-Sands at the 2016 Rio Olympics and teamed up with Mike Bryan (below) in 2018 to claim the US Open men’s doubles title.
Granted, capturing the US Open men’s singles title—the biggest prize that has eluded Sock so far—is a tall order. He not only has to defeat Zverev and then Monfils or Sinner. On his way to winning the tournament, he also would likely have to contend with the No. 1 seed, Novak Djokovic, who is on a mission to complete a Grand Slam and is in Sock’s half of the draw.
Time will tell if Sock can collect a full house of championship trophies. But four of a kind is a pretty impressive hand nonetheless.
