Andy Roddick’s coach, Larry Stefanki, thinks that his pupil’s title run at Miami is a harbinger of great things to come for the 2003 U.S. Open champion. Stefanki, who joined forces with Roddick, now 27, at the end of 2008, coached Marcelo Rios and Yevgeny Kafelnikov to No. 1 and had a fair amount of success with Fernando Gonzalez. (His stints with Tim Henman and John McEnroe were less successful.) Agassi won five of his eight career Grand Slam singles titles after his 27th birthday.
“I think this is still the infancy, I really do," Stefanki said of Roddick's title prospects. "I think he could be similar to Agassi, where his best years are from 27 onwards. I have seen it done before. I think (that before) he was very raw and his game is starting to come to where it’s not hit and miss. When you see a guy with a weapon like Andy has and so raw in every other aspect except perhaps the forehand, but not really know what his game plan is going to be, I think there has been a maturing. He has a lot of things to fall back on to win when he is not playing great, he does have the best serve in the game at the moment, but if you add all the other components, the slice and so on, it puts him in a different echelon.”—M.C.