Can Jack Sock become the first to prove that pro tennis players can be top pickleballers, too?

NEW YORK—“Pickleball is where tennis players go to die,” Andre Agassi said, with a smile, at an exhibition this spring.

Does that sound harsh, or a bit morbid? Agassi was voicing the traditional tennis opinion of its upstart little-brother sport. Only when you can’t play tennis anymore would you consider picking up a pickleball paddle and dinking a wiffle ball around a mini-court, right?

Jack Sock, it seems, has another, slightly less extreme, idea: What if pickleball is where pro tennis players go when they retire?

The 30-year-old Kansas native’s tennis career came to an early and quiet end on Court 12 at the US Open on Thursday. That’s where he played and lost two doubles matches, one with John Isner in the afternoon, and the other with Coco Gauff in the evening. Sock served for the match with Isner, and served for the second set with Gauff, but he was broken both times. After the second defeat, he gave the big and supportive crowd a tearful wave good-bye.

Sock is currently ranked No. 485 in singles and 199 in doubles, and he had been surviving mostly on wild cards in recent years. Coming into the US Open, he was just 2-4 in singles and 3-2 in doubles in 2023. But his sudden retirement tweet before the Open still came as a surprise. As recently as four months ago, in an interview with Dave Fleming of the Professional Pickleball Association, Sock said he “still had a lot of goals in tennis.” In March, he and Isner reached the semis in Indian Wells.

But that was before Sock made his pro pickleball debut in his adopted hometown, Charlotte N.C., in May. Out of the gate, he partnered with the sport’s 16-year-old superstar, Anna Leigh Waters, to win the mixed-doubles title. Sock brought his familiar tennis skills—his speed, his forehand, his hands, his closing ability—right into the pickleball kitchen.

Sock often seemed to struggle with how much he enjoyed tennis, especially in his singles career. That’s not how it looks when he plays, or talks about, pickle.

Sock will be an interesting test case: How much does your ability in one sport translate to another? Most tennis players assume they would be naturals at pickleball, a seemingly simpler and less technically challenging game. Many of us remember Gael Monfils, a decade or so ago, trying his hand at paddle tennis—a West Coast mini game—for the first time and immediately beating the world champion.

So far, at the pro level, that hasn’t been the case with pickleball. Last year Sam Querrey and Noah Rubin retired from tennis and tried the pickleball tour, but neither tore up the courts. Rubin has since come back to tennis, while Querrey has been sticking it out. If you google “Querrey” and “pickleball,” you’ll be taken to a YouTube clip entitled, “Top flight tennis pro Sam Querrey gets HUMBLED in his pro pickleball debut!”

“The tennis players that think they’re going to jump over and just kill it, it’s not going to be as easy as some think,” Sock told Fleming before his Charlotte title run. “The top pickleball players are really good.”

You can’t use your serve to get out of jail in pickleball, and you can’t expect to drill a forehand for a winner from the baseline whenever you want. Still, Sock likes his chances. Pickleball emphasizes the elements of tennis, and in particular doubles, that he enjoys most.

“The things that I’m really good at in tennis, was kind of made into a sport, which is pickleball,” he said. “The chess matches, the cat and mouse, feel plus power at times.”

Sock first tried pickle four or five years ago in Kansas, then caught the bug for real at an exhibition with Isner and Querrey in Vegas last December. Now he sounds like a man with a new toy.

“When it comes to pickleball, I’m a bit of a nerd,” he said. “I’ve watched a lot of streams, a lot of video” trying to learn the tactics.

For Sock, who has had an injury-riddled tennis career, pickleball is a less-stressful alternative, mentally and physically. He was always more comfortable having a partner on the tennis court to share the nerves, and he won’t need to swing with as much force in pickleball.

The question for now is: How much of Sock’s immediate success in mixed doubles in Charlotte was due to his partnership with Waters? In the men’s doubles event, Sock and Tyson McGuffin, were beaten in the first round.

The podcasters at The Dink Pickleball recently recorded an episode entitled, “Jack Sock: Good or Bad for Pickleball?” They wondered how much Waters had helped. They wondered whether Sock would be “normalized” at some point; i.e., would opponents get used to the unorthodox parts of his game, including his penchant for running around and hitting more forehands than most pickleballers do. They also wondered whether his immediate success would hurt pickleball’s credibility.

We’ll see about all of these things, but I’m leaning toward the Waters effect—she had to help. Sock himself appears to understand that he’s not going to walk in and dominate pickleball.

Sock often seemed to struggle with how much he enjoyed tennis, especially in his singles career. That’s not how it looks when he plays, or talks about, pickle. Let’s hope he’s going to pickleball not to die, but to live a second sporting life.