BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—Andy Roddick was in the U.S. locker room after the end of yesterday’s Davis Cup doubles match, which Bob and Mike Bryan won to give the home team a 2-1 edge in this first-round of World Group Davis Cup play. The television monitor was on, so Roddick heard Mike Bryan render his “guarantee” that Roddick would close out the tie in the first of the reverse singles today.
“I was putting on my shoes and listening on TV. I didn’t catch exactly what he said…(I heard) He’s our ‘closer.’ So he goes on and I said, damn it, Mike. . . So (then) he goes, ‘I guarantee victory’ and by then” – here, Roddick bunched up his shoulders – “I’m getting progressively tighter and tighter as he was talking.”
But as a good ‘ole boy from Tuscaloosa might say, “Wail, that didn’t work out so bad.”
Indeed. Today, Roddick came out and played a tight and bright match against Stanislas Wawrinka to end this tie, 6-4, 6-4, 6-2. The win improved the American star’s record as a tie-ending “closer” to 11-0, and put paid to Bryan’s boast. It was a triumph built on great movement and Roddick’s greatest tool and most powerful weapon, his serve. And both those assets were on display in the highlight game of the match – the 10th game, with Roddick serving for the first set.
Wawrinka won the first two points, and you had the feeling that if he could break back it would represent the crack that might provide the Swiss No. 1 with enough light to make a match of it. But on the next point, Roddick attacked Wawrinka’s lethal backhand and forced a passing shot error. Then, Roddick powdered a forehand winner off the service return; the placement whistled by Wawrinka – he barely moved – and landed in the backhand corner.
At 30-all, they engaged in a long rally – the kind in which, at least theoretically, Wawrinka would have enjoyed a greater measure of comfort. But Roddick stood his ground, moved quickly and softly, and appeared utterly comfortable as he worked his way into a winning position to elicit a backhand error. The subsequent hold point played out in similar fashion, but this time it was a Wawrinka volley error that ended it – and dimmed the Swiss chances.
That game provided a sharp, clear snapshot of the recent improvements in Roddick’s game: He’s trimmer, fitter, lighter, and using his power – including but not restricted to his serve – in more versatile and unscripted ways. It’s also a testament to the impact Larry Stefanki, Roddick’s coach for a few months now, is having on the player’s game. Alluding to the fruits of that relationship, Roddick said:
“(My movement has) been pretty good all year. That’s just the way tennis has gone in the last – even since I started, seven, eight years ago. You see a lot more guys serving big and less guys moving well. I should say everybody serves big as opposed to it being kind of a standout thing. You just try to adjust to keep up with the Jones.
“Something I’ve been doing better this year is just kind of – and Larry has been big on it – taking my time. When you’re down you can’t win all the points back at once. It’s going to be a process when you’re down Love-30. Just try to go at it. Make him play every point. . .”
The penultimate point of the match underscored some of these issues. Roddick had two breaks in hand when he served at 5-2 in the third set – no cause for alarm. But once again he found himself down 0-30, then fought back to deuce. Then he delivered an ace - not the familiar, trademark 145 mph smoker down the T, but a well-struck, curving ball with just the right amount of spin to the righty Wawrinka’s forehand corner.
Nuance is a quality less frequently associated with Roddick’s game than his sharp wit, but today he said that, with Stefanki’s encouragement, he’s been focusing less on hitting big serves than “pitching a good ballgame.” And he described that ace that brought him to match point this way: “I don’t know if I was consciously doing it (working a precise combination of spin, pace and power), but on this (indoor carpet) court, if you get action, the court will help you out a bit. You don’t have to go quite as big, especially on the wide serves, because it will tail away a little bit. He (Wawrinka) hadn’t shown me he was willing to come over returns at that point. He was just chipping it. I knew I had a little bit of leeway there.”
So the stock headline “Closer Roddick Serves His Way to Davis Cup Clincher” isn’t exactly inaccurate (he did, after all, serve 73 percent, and he faced exactly one break point in this tie), but it doesn’t come close to telling the whole story, or the real story. As McEnroe said in a pithy bit of analysis: “Oftentimes when he was younger, come in more, he’d come in on everything. Got to stay back more? He’d stay back on everything. Nice to see he’s kind of figured out that you can play a different style within one game and be successful.”
The closer performed admirably, and with a new capacity for modulation that promises to be valuable long after this tie becomes a dim memory. He also took the heat off Mike Bryan. As James Blake said, after he dispatched Marco Chiudienelli in the dead fifth rubber: “We made fun of Mike. We always do. He’s pretty much nicknamed ‘the mouth.’ We get a little nervous when the mic is in front of him. It’s lucky that Andy was so clutch today.”
That Blake played the dead rubber was somewhat surprising, given the new, nearly universal habit of both squads agreeing to send in the scrubs once a tie is decided. This is an unfortunate development, given the hunger tennis fans, especially in tennis-starved markets like Birmingham, have for the stars of the game – dead rubber or no. Blake went out there today voluntarily, happy to exercise his game a bit and give the faithful crowd the match the schedule promised.
It was a classy gesture and a fitting end to tie that featured two landmark performances: the Bryan brothers' 15th Davis Cup doubles win, a new American record, and Roddick's surpassing of Andre Agassi on the all-time Davis Cup singles win list for the U.S.
Peter Bodo, a senior editor for TENNIS magazine, also writes the TennisWorld blog.