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An early doubles match for defending Wimbledon champions Vasek Pospisil and Jack Sock ends in a win

An early doubles match for defending Wimbledon champions Vasek Pospisil and Jack Sock ends in a win

WIMBLEDON – It was a match they weren’t expecting to play so soon – 11:30 a.m. sharp on the first Monday at Wimbledon.

But after a slow start, defending doubles champions Vasek Pospisil and Jack Sock got past a potentially dangerous team in Sergiy Stakhovsky and Sam Groth, winning 5-7, 7-6(5), 7-6(3), 6-1 to advance to the second round of doubles – before they even took the court in singles.

That will happen Tuesday, as Sock plays Groth, and Pospisil and Stakhovsky’s respective opponents had a day to rest.

“I would say was one of the tougher first-round draws we could have had. Those guys are serving big, serve-volleyers in singles, always tricky,” said Pospisil, who will play French lefty Vincent Millot Tuesday.

“Today we didn’t start great. I think the energy was pretty low. missing some balls that maybe we don’t normally miss. It also was our first doubles match (together) in awhile, and I think we just started playing better as the match went on, and played a reasonably solid match after the first set,” he said.

Pospisil spoke to the ATP about the scheduling, and the explanation was that they were trying to avoid potentially having to make them double up later in the week – play both singles and doubles in the same day – if the players advanced in both draws.

Wimbledon is the only Grand Slam where they still play best-of-five sets in doubles.

Pospisil obviously would prefer they go to best-of-three sets, as the other three majors do.

“It makes it tough on the singles guys. Of course, if you speak to any of the doubles (specialists), I’m sure they’re going to say they want the five sets because they know less (top singles) guys are going to sign in and it’ll make their life a bit easier,” he said. “It’s a decision you have to make, if you want to play both. But would definitely be nice if there were other factors that were a little more encouraging for singles guys to sign up and play doubles.”

For Pospisil and Sock, the decision was an automatic one, given they won the title last year. “If we hadn’t won last year maybe I wouldn’t even be playing with Jack. But it definitely wouldn’t be so clear, so automatic, if we’d lost, say, in the third round. There actually would have been a discussion (about playing doubles at all).”

The Canadian came out of it fine physically, and actually played very, very well.

The Canadian had his eye on the ball Monday. (Stephanie Myles/opencourt.ca)
The Canadian had his eye on the ball Monday. (Stephanie Myles/opencourt.ca)

He said he felt okay again on the third or fourth day after a back spasm forced him to retire in his match against Marcel Granollers at Nottingham last Wednesday.

“I was worried, for sure, just because I felt a lot of similarities to certain issues I had in the past that ended up being more serious. But it wasn’t the case,” he said.

As for Millot, the two have met twice before, in lower-level events back in Canada.

Pospisil didn’t remember the first meeting, which took place at an entry-level Futures event in Sherbrooke, Quebec when Pospisil was only 19.

And then, suddenly, the light went on.

“I remember now! It was 6-4, 7-6. The second set breaker was 16-14. I think it was the longest breaker I’d ever played. Saved seven set points, something like that,” he said.

Pretty close, it was 6-3, 7-6 (16-14 in the tiebreaker).