NEW YORK—Is there any sadder sight than a section of fans who haven’t had a ball hit in their direction by the player who has just won a match? It was true again today on Court 17 when Jelena Jankovic, after making it through her second round, took the traditional three balls, signed each one, and began to look for a spot in the crowd to hit them. Arms shot up and children shrieked as Jankovic turned around and around, smiling and teasing the audience until they reached peak volume. But when, a few seconds later, she sent the third and last ball sailing upward, all of those arms shot straight back down and the building went silent. I thought I might have heard a few children start to cry.
Court 17 is the Open’s newest arena. It made its debut, in incomplete form, last year, and has been upgraded with permanent seating and a fair amount of concrete. On the first day of qualies last week, it still had that new-paint smell. The low-slung bowl is reminiscent both of the famed, and soon to be demolished, Bullring at Roland Garros, as well as the mid-sized, amphitheater-style stadiums that dot Melbourne Park. This is the direction the Open intends to go. In the coming years, the boxy old Grandstand will be torn down and replaced with another, larger bowl structure on the other side of the grounds.
To do that, the Open will have to take over more of surrounding Flushing Meadows Park. There’s been a gradual detente between the tournament and its neighbors over the last 30 years. In the 1980s, the National Tennis Center could feel something like a fortress—or maybe that’s just how it felt to a teenager from Pennsylvania who wasn’t used to hearing drums being pounded in the distance. On one of those visits, as those drums beat on, a gruff New Yorker in the crowd instructed Gabriela Sabatini to “hurt the ball.” My family got out of town as quickly as we could in those days.
Now there’s an easy flow from the main gates, through the UniSphere area, and beyond. The barriers are broken down further on Court 17. The seats in the top row, in the far corner, look out on the park. If you’re lucky enough to catch a breeze up there, it’s as close to the country as you’re going to get at the Open.
The place isn’t perfect. The entrances are too narrow, and it’s difficult for spectators to find seats when it’s busy. Otherwise, though, 17 feels like a winner. It’s not small enough, and the seats aren’t close enough to the players, to be called intimate; the ball doesn’t come off the the strings with that pop that you hear when you’re down low in the Grandstand. But Court 17 is small enough that you feel united as a single audience—you obviously don’t feel way inside Ashe, where everyone seems to be in a separate zip code.
Court 17 is still new, and it’s on the fringe of the grounds, which may explain why fans were a little late getting out there to catch the latest U.S. hopeful, Jack Sock, play his second-round match there this afternoon. But it didn’t take long for them to get into the swing. As Sock stepped to the line for his opening serve, someone in the crowd called out, “Bring the heat, Jack!” I guess things haven’t changed that much since the days of “Hurt the ball!” in the crazy ‘80s. Sock obliged with a 134 m.p.h. ace to start his match against Flavio Cipolla.
Mismatch was a better term for it. After some wild forehand shanks early, Sock settled in and went about dismantling the undersized Italian, who was giving up four inches and 20 pounds to him. A native Nebraskan with a baby face and a beefy build for a tennis player, Sock looks the part of a corn-fed hero of the heartland. He plays like a Yank, too: First serve in the 130s with a nice kick to back it up, heavy whip topspin forehand, two-hand backhand rally shot. His style can seem a little generic—at first glance, his game could be called Ginepri-esque—and his flicky forehand can go off, but Sock’s 6-2, 6-2, 6-4 win over a player ranked 156 spots ahead of him, and who had beaten him easily earlier this summer, was impressive.
Sock chalked up the reversal to a change in tactics, and more maturity. “I was patient today and waited for my shot,” Sock said. He knew that he could control the rallies against Cipolla, so there was no need to pull the trigger too early.
Watching him today, his strengths and flaws, I kept thinking that if you could put Sock together with Ryan Harrison, you’d have the perfect U.S. prospect. Sock appears to be better on offense, better at finding the corners, moving the ball around, dictating with his forehand—he loves the inside-in version especially—and constructing points. Harrison is better at scrambling and defending and winning with his legs. Harrison is 20; Sock will turn 20 on September 24th.
Sock is still an unknown quantity. He pops up each year at the U.S. Open and fades back into Challengers afterward; his career ATP record is just 5-9. He won the boys’ title at Flushing Meadows in 2010, and won a round in the men’s draw last year before losing to fellow Nebraska native Andy Roddick. This year Sock underwent surgery for an abdominal tear, but he’s been working with Andre Agassi’s trainer, Gil Reyes, for the last few months, and has hired former Top Tenner Joakim Nystrom of Sweden as his coach. He has the heft for today’s game, but does he have the flipside of the equation, the speed and flexibility? If nothing else, Harrison and Sock show how hard it is these days to find someone who has it all.
“I feel better about my game,” Sock says. “I feel like I’m ready to take it to the next level.”
At this tournament, the next level will be represented by Nicolas Almagro. Sock will get the 11th seed in a match likely to be played in the Grandstand on Saturday, and broadcast on CBS. That will give Sock, and everyone else, a chance to see just how ready he is. One Cornhusker, Roddick, is going to walk away at this U.S. Open. Will another take his place?
For now, though, Sock has the best answer I’ve heard to the eternal question: What’s wrong with tennis in this country? Here’s a conversation from his press conference on Tuesday.
*Q: Does this question about American tennis haunt you? Do you get it at small tournaments? Big tournaments? Cocktail parties? Dinner conversations?
SOCK: I can’t drink cocktails*.
Click here for all of Steve Tignor's reports from the 2012 U.S. Open.