Good friends and Toronto doubles partners Nick Kyrgios and Jack Sock will kick off their singles campaigns on Monday. Kyrgios is going up against Wimbledon junior champion Denis Shapovalov, while Sock has an all-American affair with Denis Kudla on his hands.
(WC) Denis Shapovalov vs. (11) Nick Kyrgios
Kyrgios withdrew from this past week’s Citi Open in Washington, D.C., so the 21-year-old Australian will be making his first appearance since Wimbledon when he takes the court for first-round action at the Rogers Cup on Monday. A decent run at the All-England Club saw Kyrgios survive a trio of competitive encounters with Radek Stepanek, Dustin Brown, and Feliciano Lopez before getting clobbered by Andy Murray in the last 16. The world No. 18 is a stellar 26-10 for the season with a title in Marseille and three semifinal showings–including at the Miami Masters.
Up first for Kyrgios is Shapovalov, who got a wild card into Toronto as a highly-touted 17-year-old from Canada. Just now starting to make a name for himself, Shapovalov captured the Wimbledon junior title earlier this month and played in the main draw of an ATP tournament for the first time ever in Washington, D.C. (lost his opener to Lukas Lacko 7-6(3), 4-6, 6-4). The world No 371 is undeniably talented, but this is the toughest competition he will have ever faced and the pressure of playing on a grand stage in front of his own Canadian fans may be too much to handle.
Pick: Kyrgios in 2
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(16) Jack Sock vs. Denis Kudla
Sock and Kudla will be squaring off for the seventh time in their careers and for the fourth time on the main tour. Surprisingly, the head-to-head series is all tied up at 3-3 and Kudla leads it 2-1 at the ATP level. The less-heralded American prevailed in three sets on the indoor hard courts of San Jose in 2012 and via a straight-set decision last summer in Atlanta to go along with a third-set tiebreaker survival at the 2012 Knoxville Challenger. Sock got the job done at the Futures level in 2010 and 2011 before most recently taking care of Kudla 6-4, 6-2 last fall in Stockholm.
Struggling down at No. 100 in the world, Kudla has failed to build on his 2015 success. The 23-year-old is a mere 8-16 at the ATP level and he is on a five-match losing streak dating back to the Stuttgart second round. Sock’s hard-court summer has been a mixed bag so far. Toronto’s 16th seed beat Marin Cilic in a five-set Davis Cup rubber two weeks ago, but ended up losing the deciding match to Croatia’s Borna Coric. Sock then reached the Washington, D.C. quarterfinals before succumbing to the huge serve of eventual runner-up Ivo Karlovic. Contrary to what the past history between Sock and Kudla suggests, at this point in time it should be entirely one-way traffic.
Pick: Sock in 2
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Yes…Kyrios in 2 and Sock the same ?
Nick in 2 and Sock in 2… Kudla has really been struggling this year on all surfaces, just don’t see him winning this one at all
Kyrios looks like he is throwing this. Not sitting down on changeover, rushing ever serve, hitting second serve same as first. Just watch his body language and you can see little care. I hate when people scream fix, but I haven’t seen anything like this even from him.
I should also mention he has tape under his knee, so he may be hurt and not wanting to be there or withdraw.
Holy moly I just turned on the tv and saw the last game where Shapovalov broke and man is he crushing it. His one hander is awesome. Wish I’d seen the first set. He’s really got a great future ahead of him.
Benny G, he is playing well, but I’m telling you Kyrios is dogging it. No effort at all to go after much. He was overheard on the mics that he said he was out of shape. He wants out of there as quick as possible.
Yeah he got the set but he got some help in the prior game from some Shapovalov errors. Maybe he’ll find some motivation now that he’s taken the second set and has some momentum. I like Kyrgios especially when he’s playing well and more focused but I also think it would be awesome to see the huge win for Shapovalov. We’ll see how it goes. The young Canadian got the first game so that’s a good start for him. Pretty entertaining match so far.
Holy moly Kyrgios has hit 18 double faults. That’s just horrendous!
Man that’s huge from Shapovalov but wow did Kyrgios really underperform. He just didn’t seem motivated like fsutomahawk was saying. He was talking about going home after the match like after the first set or something. He’s gotta find better motivation. He can play lights out like in Montpellier earlier this year or like he did today. He said in a recent interview that his motivation is up and down but maybe if he wins a huge event or something and is like super locked in and on fire like in Montpellier and wins a big event his motivation will rise. Really poor result for NK but amazing moment for the Canadian. He’s got a shot against Grigor too as Grigor has really been struggling and didn’t play very well to escape Sugita in his first match.
Disgraceful performance and behaviour from the over-hyped Kyrgios. Koenig repeatedly referred to him as one of the best players in the world, future No.1 and multiple Slam winner……….blah blah blah. He started off saying he was clearly showing Shapo who was boss but had to backtrack fast after he lost the first set 🙂
Kyrgios lost? What’s up with him? I don’t get it.