Jack Sock (L) and Mike Bryan celebrate with the winners; trophy following the men's doubles final at the 2018 US Open on Sept. 7, 2018 in Flushing, N.Y.
Mike and Bob Bryan are a legendary doubles tennis team, but Mike Bryan and Jack Sock are also proving to be formidable and are making history along the way.
Bryan and Sock won their second consecutive Grand Slam title together on Friday, defeating Lukas Kubo and Marcelo Melo in the final of the US Open, 6-3, 6-1, at Flushing Meadows, New York.
This is Bryan’s 18th Grand Slam doubles title, breaking Australian John Newcombe’s record for the most ever, and his sixth at the US Open. This is just his second with Sock after Bryan’s longtime partner, twin brother Bob, was injured in the spring. This is also Bryan’s 120th career doubles title overall.
The achievement doesn’t end there, either. This is the first time in 35 years, since John McEnroe and Peter Fleming in 1983, that an American men’s doubles team won Wimbledon and the US Open in the same year.
This was the duo’s 12th straight Grand Slam match victory going back to Wimbledon. They hadn’t dropped a set in the US Open until the second set of the semifinals, which Colombians Robert Farah and Juan Sebastian Cabal won in a tiebreaker before ultimately falling at the hands of the Americans.
In Kubo and Melo they faced the top-ranked men’s doubles team in the world at the end of 2017 who were 2-0 in finals this year heading into Friday.
Unlike the semifinals, there was little drama along the way in this match. Bryan and Sock dominated their opponents from start to finish, winning seven games in a row en route to the title.
Karen Price is a reporter from Pittsburgh who has covered Olympic sports for various publications. She is a freelance contributor to TeamUSA.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.
