FROM THE PUBLISHER | Small world, Chapter 387: MHK and the U.S. Open

It’ll be Center’s first-ever pro match. It is Sock’s last-ever pro tournament.

Sock announced over the weekend that he’s retiring after the Open. As you might know, Sock played high school tennis at Blue Valley North; he never lost a match. My oldest kid almost played him at the state tournament one year, but lost the match that he would’ve needed to win in order to do so. My youngest actually trained with Sock for a bit under the guidance of Mike Wolf, a coach in Kansas City. Back to Wolf in a minute.

Sock was the most talented tennis player I’ve ever seen up close. The first time I saw him play, at a public park behind Shawnee Mission East, he hit a ball harder than I had ever seen anybody ever hit one. It landed right in the corner, catching both lines.

Sock went on to reach as high as No. 8 in the world. He won four Grand Slam titles in doubles, plus an Olympic gold medal. None of that surprised me at all. He was, for a minute, the next big American male hope – but, like everybody else in the past 20 years, could not overtake Federer, Nadal and Djokovic.

Center, meanwhile, is the granddaughter of Rosalind Center, who lives in Manhattan, and the late Melvin Center. She’s the daughter of one of my best friends, Brian Center, now an attorney in Los Angeles, but like me a 1986 Manhattan High guy.

She won the national championship at 18-and-under girls doubles, a win that gives you an automatic berth in the U.S. Open. She’ll play for UCLA a year from now.

When she was here for her grandfather’s funeral, she practiced with Dan Harkin, the Manhattan tennis standout.

Olivia is also the niece of Michael Center, the last guy to win a state championship at MHS before Dan Harkin. Michael went on to play at KU, where he teamed up to win a conference doubles title with Mike Wolf. That’s the guy who coached Sock, and who coached my kid.

So, if the tennis gods have any sense of context, they’ll put Olivia Center on a court next to Jack Sock. Michael Center knows a thing or two about coaching, too – he was the head coach at Texas and built the roster that won the national team title a couple years ago. So, if the court arrangements are right, perhaps he and Wolf could co-coach both doubles teams.

Look hard enough, and there are always those connections. The tennis world is small, but so is the newspaper world. I would imagine the world of funeral directors, or ag extension agents, or nurses, or personal-trainers, or English professors, is really the same. Even on the biggest stages, these are just people, and people are always connected in surprising ways.