Sock It To Him

How did JACK SOCK, a twenty-four-year-old native of Nebraska, become the future of AMERICAN TENNIS? It starts with an OTHERWORLDLY FOREHAND.

- Eric Konigsberg

Is it something in the water? Or those broad plains of the Great Plains, the summerlong humidity, those winds—“when the nets would stand out stiff as proud flags,” in the words of David Foster Wallace, “and an errant ball would blow clear to the easternmost fence, interrupting play on the next several courts”?

What can be said without equivocation is that Nebraska, not normally considered a hotbed of tennis (even Wallace, though he was referencing the same geography, had Illinois on his mind when he wrote the above), has given the men’s pro-tennis tour two of the finest players of this youngish century. The first was Andy Roddick, who remains the last American to achieve the number-one spot in the Association of Tennis Professionals world rankings (for three months in late 2003 and early 2004).

And the second? That’s twenty four-year-old Lincoln native Jack Sock, who assumed the mantle of the next great American hope earlier this year by winning two ATP tournaments (in New Zealand and Florida) and rising as high as number fourteen in the world.

“It is awesome. How many players can say they’re the best in their country? But it’s not a goal I ever thought about,” Sock says. Tennis is a global community, and plenty of his forebears—Yanks named Connors, McEnroe, Sampras, Agassi, and Courier—set the bar much higher. “The goal for the top American isn’t the top twenty— it’s top ten, top five, number one in the world.”