Across the last two weeks of December, Baseline will dish out awards for the greatest acts of 2018.
Before Mike Bryan and Jack Sock turned the major events in the second half of the year into their own play space, Mike was doing quite well with his first-half partner.
Actually, that should be his “lifetime” partner.
Bob and Mike Bryan entered 2018 with newfound determination to reclaim their place at the top of the rankings. The year prior was a particularly mediocre season by their standards as they only won two titles, with both of them coming at the ATP 250 level—a far cry from the Masters and majors they were accustomed to.
At this year’s Australian Open, their first tournament of the year, the duo advanced to the semifinals. Returning to U.S. soil, they suffered a couple of surprise early-round defeats in Long Island, NY, and Delray Beach, Fla.
After those blips, signs of the Bryan brothers’ magic started to return with back-to-back finals in Acapulco and Indian Wells. Then, they won their first Masters tournament in nearly two years at the Miami Open, defeating the Russian youngsters Karen Khachanov and Andrey Rublev in a tighter-than-expected final.