Fueling the Fire

Two points from leveling the match at 2 sets all, Roddick steps up to serve. His matte-black baseball cap is further dulled by the sweat that soaks through it, making it look like a cast-iron skillet. An apt comparison, to go along with his searing serve. On the other side of the net Djokovic bounces up and down, his spiky jet-black hair shining in the glow of Ashe's floodlights. Roddick's first delivery misses. He gambles on his second, going for the ace. Clips the tape. 30-all now, and Roddick again misfires. Two double-faults in a row! 20,000 fans in Ashe murmur in shock. At breakpoint Roddick hits the panic button. For Andy, that means rushing the net at inopportune times. He kicks his first serve out wide, rushes in to play a backhand volley, and is trapped as Djokovic's lob sails over him and lands inside the baseline. The 4th set goes to a tiebreaker, but becomes a formality as Djokovic captures the early advantage and withstands a late rally by Roddick to finish the deal.

A couple minutes later Djokovic managed to turn those cheers into boos during his on-court interview with Michael Barkann. Djokovic obviously had a huge chip on his shoulder, and basically said that he was happy to beat Roddick since Roddick said he had "16 injuries". Barkann tried to rescue the interview but Djokovic would not let it go. He kept talking about how it "wasn't nice that Roddick was telling the crowd he was faking injuries". I think this event got blown out of proportion, so I'll just say that I agree that Roddick's previous interview (see below post) was mostly in jest, and also that Djokovic never broke the rules by calling the trainer when he played Robredo. If you've got a problem with that, beat him, or change the rules.

So what happened in this match? Roddick was in such a hurry to lose the first set that I only caught the tail end of it when I got home from work. Djokovic was blocking Roddick's first serve back, deep, and waiting for Roddick to make an error, which Roddick was only too eager to oblige. The second set was more of the same. Djokovic would push Andy behind the baseline with a deep shot to the middle, then swing him out wide to his backhand, but with margin; a safety shot. Roddick's reply was to hit his backhand hard crosscourt, where Djokovic was ready and waiting to send his next shot down the line for the winner. Simple but very effective. Roddick also seemed unable to finish off short balls for winners, sending them long. He changed tack and started hitting these balls as approaches to finish off the point at the net, but Roddick's forehand doesn't lend itself to an approach shot. His extreme Western grip makes it harder to get down to low balls, and his heavy topspin makes the balls jump up into the strike zone, instead of penetrating through the court. Roddick's black-and-white striped shirt was the zebra to Djokovic's lion, watching passing shots zip through him all night.

At 2-1 in the 3rd set Djokovic played an extremely loose game and Roddick took advantage to get the break. This seemed to give his serve the shot it needed, as up to this point Roddick was aceless. Now it was raining big buckets of Roddick aces. He made the one break stand up and took the 3rd set. The 4th set started and Roddick really seemed to hit his stride. He abandoned the panicky bluff-my-way-to-net strategy and started going for his groundstrokes, especially on the forehand, hitting several nicely angled inside-out winners. He started anticipating Djokovic's down the line strike and recovered closer to the center line after hitting backhands. Djokovic, clearly rattled by the pro-Andy crowd and the suddenly powerful groundies, began to press and miss a bit more. Roddick broke at 3 all and it looked like we were heading to a 5th set. John McEnroe was happy, Ted Robinson was happy, and it looked like the USA Network would get the send-off that they were looking for. And then they didn't.

To his credit, Roddick showed good sportsmanship at the end of the match and walked off the court waving to the crowd. From their press conferences later, it appears that they cleared the air in the locker room afterward. And although he lost and extinguished the dream of an American man winning this year, I think Roddick's run has to be considered a success. Since he seems to thrive on people writing him off, I'll add some fuel to his fire; you'll never win another major, Andy!