Tennis Atlantic

Opinion: Dirty Sock Is A Lock For His Own Hall of Shame

I wish I could say that the 2025 Hall of Fame Open, which concluded last Sunday, will be remembered for the return of WTA tennis for the first time in 30 years, or for its champions, Caty  McNally (WTA) and Zach Svajda (ATP). I wish it will be remembered for the tournament organizers and grounds crew who kept the matches running despite abysmal weather. Unfortunately, I’ll remember it for something else. For the loss of respect for a player I once admired. Look, I become exhausted from the constant intersectionality of sports and politics because my escape from the real world is by watching sports. What an antiquated concept. So at this little blog, the focus almost always attempts to shine on the matches, the grounds and the personalities. Once in a while, an unforced error so colossal comes along that it cannot be ignored. This is one of those times.

As you already know by now, Jack Sock was awarded a wild card into the main draw of the men’s doubles event by tournament organizers at the Hall of Fame Open in Newport, Rhode Island, an ATP Challenger event. Tour rules allow a doubles wild card recipient to choose his or her partner. He chose a 59-year-old billionaire with no professional tennis experience. Bill Ackman is known for more than being rich. The New York Times reported last week that he is a top-level campaign adviser and financier to the sleazy embattled Mayor of New York, Eric Adams. He was recently featured in the latest issue of Jacobin for his on-again, off-again, on-again love affair with Donald Trump. On a positive note, he is known to have contributed financially to the Pro Tennis Players Association, which strives to represent the interests of the players rather than the tour’s interests. Ackman was chosen by Jack Sock as his doubles teammate two weeks ago in the first round of a competitive match against the Australian duo of Omar Jasika and Bernie Tomic. Thank the Tennis Gods that the Australians prevailed, but never mind that. Never mind that there was a undoubtedly a serious young player in the New England area with ranking points and far more tournament experience than the hedge fund manager. Never mind that it was the main draw of an actual professional sport, not an exhibition match played by Angela From The Office, who is featured during the Hall’s induction sideshow next month. Never mind that Jack Sock apparently flew in on Ackman’s private jet. And never mind about Bill Ackman.

Be mad about this because, as usual, the optics of it are horrific. Players and fans have always been a little suspicious about the proliferation of wild cards by tournaments at their exclusive discretion, but this one blows the lid off of it. There are acceptable and less acceptable ways in which these transactions go down:

Scenario #1: Local player lacks the ranking points for direct entry into a qualifying or main draw field. The local tournament organizer throws a bone to the local kid to do a favor to the region and to sell more tickets since the local kid will now be playing in the event. See: Every tournament ever. ACCEPTABLE

Scenario #2: A tournament owned by a sports agency representation company uses its wild cards to stock the event with its clients in order to increase their exposure and market share. See: Citi Open 2012, Genie Bouchard et al. LESS ACCEPTABLE

Scenario #3: An old billionaire with no career rankings points is named as a doubles partner from a has-been wild card recipient at an event hosted by the International Tennis Hall of Fame, a venerable institution and shrine celebrating the integrity of the sport. See: Jack Sock, 2025 COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE

But here’s the thing: This has nothing to do with the ego of a quixotic billionaire, nor with the often erratic governing body of men’s tennis. Nor is is it the fault of the tournament or the Hall of Fame. This is all on Jack Sock, a man who was clearly disappointed with his singles career results. It’s Jack Sock’s big middle finger to the sport that awarded him an embarrassing amount of wild cards during his singles career when other players would have benefitted from the obscene opportunities for exposure that he was given. This from the man who angrily “retired” from tennis almost two years ago after crashing out in the first round of the 2023 US Open. This from the man who decided that the pro pickleball tour was the place to be until he discovered that there was no real money in it.   

Nobody wanted to go on the record when I attended the early rounds of the tournament, but everyone was slightly embarrassed, from ATP employees to Hall of Fame brass as well. The understanding around the grounds was that the ATP was far from thrilled about the arrangement and tried to minimize exposure of the match as to limit its visibility and the resulting discussion that would inevitably attend said match. It may have worked as it came and went without a lot of fanfare. 

Why wouldn’t the ATP be less than thrilled about Sock’s sleight? For starters, it made a legitimate sport look like professional wrestling. On top of that, there is the lingering problem that billionaires have purchased tournaments, continually ‘upgrading’ facilities and ticket prices, too. Our sport, like all of sport, is sliding toward playgrounds for the rich. Even the ticket prices at Newport last week were slightly startling: $50 and up for a fan to watch an ATP Challenger. Compare that with a Challenger like Charlottesville, where it’s free to enter except for the final weekend rounds, when tickets cost $10-$20. Now in their defense, your ticket entitled you to free entry to the Hall of Fame museum, which charges an admission fee. I give them a pass on the ticket prices because the Hall of Fame and the museum are jewels of our sport. But when you added a pickle ball pro who brought a rich friend to that main draw, you lost me.

And as for that billionaire? Couldn’t he be satisfied with playing in a Pro-Am like other rich people do? Apparently not, because a Pro-Am is an event that pairs professionals with folks with money for an exhibition match. Good memories, good photos. And this tournament came on the heels of the “Finance Cup”, a tony annual event for Wall Street bigwigs to hit on the grass courts of Newport while hanging out with John McEnroe, who is reportedly paid $100,000 for four hours of work on a single day. Ackman apparently wasn’t satisfied with that. No, this aristocratic fanboy appeared to be so selfish that he would ding the integrity of the sport by playing in a competitive format for a wild card that he bought, even indirectly, from Sock. Who says “No” to a man with a giant check book? Certainly not Sock. 

He’s not the first. DC Citi Open part owner Mark Ein, a meager multimillionaire who made his money with pricey parking spaces in Washington and later updated the meaning of “sportswashing” to the Nation’s Capital (“SportsWashington”) by teaming up with the sovereign wealth fund of a country who doesn’t recognize basic human rights, apparently also played doubles in various events where sometimes his opponents would allegedly gift him a win by walkover. Also shameful, but those events weren’t at the International Tennis Hall of Fame. 

There is blame here, but not as much as I’d like to put on Ackman, other than the fact that he should have taken a pass if he truly cared about the sport. He recently announced that he would make a $10,000,000 contribution to the Hall of Fame. The Hall should keep it as carbon credits to offset the damage Sock has done to the tennis environment.

I squarely blame Jack Sock for this whole mess whether he concocted the whole thing or not. Jack was always a hot dog and a loose cannon, but I liked it when he wasn’t obviously injuring pro tennis. I flew to Atlanta fourteen years ago to interview him when he turned pro and I thought the whole world, even my parents, would know the name Jack Sock. It didn’t happen. Like I said, Sock’s singles career was a massive disappointment but he looked mighty proud posting that Instagram snap of Newport through the opera window of someone’s private jet. Maybe Jack is happy to be a Sock Puppet for the world’s billionaires, but you shouldn’t be. 

—S. Fogleman