Jack Sock Impresses In His First Professional Pickleball Singles Tournament

Jack Sock’s success in professional tennis speaks for itself; he achieved top 10 ranks in both Singles and Doubles, he has multiple ATP titles in both singles and doubles, he qualified for the tour’s year end championship in both 2017 and 2018 (winning the Doubles title in 2018), and has earned more than $11M for his career.

In the last year or so, he’s discovered pickleball, and has grown to really enjoy it. He first appeared in a PPA exhibition in Las Vegas, playing two top PPA pros with doubles partner and fellow US tennis great John Isner and fared well enough that prevailing pickleball pundits pondered whether he’d be successful on the pro tour.

Well, wonder no more, because when the PPA tour announced it was coming to Sock’s hometown of Charlotte, he signed up. I caught up with Jack before the tournament started to talk about expectations and results, and then watched his progress in each match today. Here, I’m breaking down his singles performance, which (and I’m burying the lead here a bit) was incredibly impressive. Later this weekend I’ll recap his doubles play with a similar analysis.

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Sock avoided the massive qualifying draw with a wild card right into the main draw, and got his tournament started against regular tour player and fellow Tar Heel #13 seed Anton Gudz (who also happens to be an interesting player; not too many professional athletes out there also hold a PhD in Chemistry). When asked about his thoughts on singles the day before the tournament, Sock observed, “Singles is the event that’s gonna take me a decent time to get my feet wet. I’m confident in my abilities but for a first tournament, it will take a second to get used to.”

If there were any butterflies on Sock’s behalf, they were not apparent, as he made a very smart play on the match’s first point to jump on a Gudz passing attempt and looked right at home on the court. Sock utilized a “chip and charge” approach on his service returns, taking advantage of his ability to really undercut and slice a ball to get great positioning at the net. Sock was also able to use his regular tennis topspin-heavy approach to hit deep, dipping passing shots, though it took him most of the first round to dial them in and not fly them long. Sock showed really solid skills at the net, drawing from his significant pro tennis doubles experience, and used his 6’3” length to provide coverage of passing attempts. At first glance, he looks like a pretty formidable singles player.

Gudz held his own though, going on a run towards the end of the first game before losing 11-8. In the second game, Sock exhibited a really strong service return game, ripping heavy returns that Gudz could do little with, and showing an even better 3rd shot passing game. Sock ran out to a massive lead and took game two with ease 11-4 to win his first pro singles match.

In the second round (or the round of 16), Sock was initially projected into the dangerous James Ignatowich, but he capitulated 0,2 to relative unknown Naveen Beasley, putting two 20-something seeds against each other. Sock started the match with a service winner and really didn’t look back. His heavy topspin serve gave Beasley (a former collegiate tennis player from Cal-Poly) fits. Sock worked Beasley’s two-handed backhand, and Naveen struggled to keep his ground strokes and backhand blocks in the court. When Beasley was at the net, Sock’s passes were forceful and his drop shots unattackable. When Sock made it to the net, his touch and angles were unbeatable. Sock won with ease 11-2, 11-2 to move into the quarterfinals.

For those who projected the bracket before it started, Sock’s potential quarter final opponent was supposed to be Dylan Frazier, who has a slew of pro singles medals from both the PPA and the APP in his career. As they say though, that’s why they play the games. Bracket-busting lefty #12 Jake Kusmider topped podcasting maven Zane Navratil in the 1st round, then cruised past Frazier 10,1 in the second to set up a meeting with Sock.

Kusmider came out confident, showing fantastic movement with great work at the net to jump out to a 5-0 lead on Sock. It didn’t take the converted tennis legend long to get it back, hitting a slew of hard-to-handle passing shots and inside out forehands to quickly even the first game at 5. Sock makes liberal use of lobs, often a no-no on the small pickleball court, but usually tracks down the slams and easily gets back into points. Kusmider got the serve back at 5-5 on an “sorry not sorry” let cord drop shot, then got three straight errors out of Sock to force a timeout to stop the bleeding. Sock got the serve back, and went back to his playbook, using inside-out forehands and penetrating, heavy topspin passing shots to even the game at eight. Sock’s length was on display, as Kusmider hit more than a few passing shots that Sock was able to cover with surprising speed. A winded Kusmider flew a service return at 9-9, then missed a disputed service return at 10-9 down to give Sock the first game.

The frustrated South Carolina-native Kusmider came out energized in game 2, jumping out to a 3-1 lead. However, a disputed line call, a rare hands battle at the net, and yet another inside-out forehand had Sock back on top. Both players started to show some fatigue, making uncharacteristic errors midway through the choppy second game. A grueling rally at 5-5 featured Sock working Kusmider back and forth from the net, finally hitting a winner to the forehand that Jake could not reach. Two excellent winners gave the Charleston native a 7-5 lead, and even a Sock time-out couldn’t stem the Kusmider run, who took game two 11-5 to send the match to a breaker.

In game 3, Kusmider had the serve to start and got two fast points on service return errors from a sloppy Sock. After trading side-outs, Kusmider opened up a 5-0 lead on several more overhit ground strokes from Sock. Suddenly passing shots that were landing all morning for Sock were sailing wide and long. Kusmider kept the pressure on, not showing any ill effects or changes in strategy, but Sock missed over and over. It was one-way traffic the entire third game, with Kusmider opening up a 10-0 lead. In danger of getting a donut (or to be “pickled” as is the terminology in pickleball), Sock bore down and saved match points against multiple times while getting the game back to 10-7, but he could get it no further. Kusmider got him with a clean backhand passing shot winner for match point.

After the match, Kusmider noted, “I’m just trying to make forehands, sliding around, just grinding. That’s pretty much my game. It’s working thus far.”

Critiques and Observations? Sock’s over-reliance on a run-around forehand opened up the court and left him susceptible to flaring his inside-out forehands wide and leaving too much of the court open. Kusmider noticed the same, and noted that he made an adjustment after the first game to take advantage. “I noticed that Jack loves his forehand, so when I was returning his serve, I started hitting my backhand slice return to his forehand corner. That was an adjustment that I made and I was able to come back and win it.”

Sock also hesitated to take attackable balls out of the air, instead opting multiple times to step back, thus ceding the net and ceding ground in the rally. But he showed amazing agility on the court to make up for his run-around forehand, his dipping topspin shots were incredibly tough for opponents to handle, and he showed a really adept and unattackable backspin/slice dink shot from all areas of the court that allowed him to easily reset. I think a temporary loss of focus in the third game and a little fatigue did him in, as he got too far behind to mount a come-back. Otherwise, as frequently noted above, Sock’s pin-point accuracy with hard dipping topspin drives was excellent all day, and his tennis skills easily translated to the pickleball court. I

A quarter final appearance is a great showing for his first singles tournament in a draw filled with experienced and accomplished veterans, and I have no doubt he could go further with a bit more experience under his belt.