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
(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
The post Toronto R1 previews and predictions: Kyrgios vs. Shapovalov, Sock vs. Kudla appeared first on The Grandstand.