SOCK GETTING COMFY ON CLAY
PARIS American Jack Sock is proving to be a momentum player. He went 80-0 in high school and brought a 0-5 streak on clay into the French Open.
Sock won three matches in qualifying and powered past Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 6-2, 6-2, 7-5 in the first round Tuesday at Roland Garros.
“The qualifying matches for sure gave me some momentum, and I was able to use it,” Sock, the ATP Tour’s 188th-ranked player, said of his fourmatch unbeaten streak.
Sock, a strapping 20-year-old from Lincoln, Neb., first served notice when he won the 2010 U.S. Open junior title. Last year, he reached the third round of the U.S. Open behind his big serve and dangerous forehand, but he has experienced the usual peaks and valleys of a young player learning the tour ropes.
In February, he upset then-top-15 player Milos Raonic of Canada on his way to his first ATP Tour quarterfinal in San Jose, but Sock is 5-5 for the year at the tour level.
“The results have been up and down, but I thought I have been competing very well,” said Sock, who split with his Swedish coach, Joakim Nystrom, in April and is working with Craig Boynton and Jay Berger of the U.S. Tennis Association development program out of Carson, Calif.
Sock, who wore the initials of two friends who died in separate accidents on his shoes, said he had never competed on red clay but always liked dirt.
His dinners have been more familiar: He has jumped in a cab to the Mexican chain Chipotle in seven of his 10 nights in Paris.
“I’m definitely trying to use my weapons and play my game and be the aggressor,” said Sock, who next faces sometimes-training partner Tommy Haas, the No. 12 seed from Germany. “But if I need to, I can kind of grind a little bit.”