Battle of Nebraska: Roddick vs. Sock

Friday night's feature Arthur Ashe Stadium match -- Andy Roddick against Jack Sock -- is "certainly not a challenging story to write," Roddick suggested, because it matches two natives of Nebraska, not a state known for tennis, on tennis' biggest stage, the U.S. Open.

"I think we're the only two teenagers to play tennis in Nebraska in the last 30 years and we're both in the U.S. Open," Roddick said. "Maybe we're missing something. Maybe we need the cornfed boys."

Roddick, the 2003 Open champ, is trying to regain a bit of past form at 29, while Sock, 18, has just turned pro after having won two national junior titles and last year's Open boys tournament.

They first met, Sock said, at a University of Nebraska football game, "and I've met him here and then since. I've spent a little time with him, practiced with him a couple of times."

Roddick was born in Omaha, Sock in Lincoln, and Roddick kidded that Sock "even has the half takeup with the serve" similar to his.

"He's got the flailing elbow on the forehand and the backhand," Roddick said. "It's fun to watch the kids, when it's all there ahead of them. They have this incredible journey ahead of them."

But there is some fiction involved in the Nebraska theme. Roddick's family moved to Texas when he was 4 and to Florida when he was 11, where he attended high school at Boca Prep and was a basketball teammate of the current top-ranked American, Mardy Fish.

And Sock posted his perfect 80-0 high school tennis record in Overland Park, Kan. Sock said he played "a bunch of different sports growing up," but that did not include Nebraska's No. 1 sport, football.

Said Sock: "I'd get broken in half."