ANDY Roddick came out of the traps like a hare but ended up fulfilling the role he was supposed to play as the universally-regarded underdog. It was never a meek surrender, though. How could it ever be with Roddick, who turns every performance into a passion play and who came out yesterday afternoon pumped up to the eyeballs with an adrenaline which seemed not simply to supply him with extra vigour but also served to banish fears?
Three aces in his first service game was the A-Rod’s way of introducing himself to Federer, although even before this he had flung back returns of service as though there were traces of gunpowder smeared across his racket strings. Roddick recently st
arred in a Dennis the Menace storyline in the Beano, and was perhaps picked because his style of play lends itself to cartoon depiction. "Thwack" goes the ball as it connects with racket, "whoosh" is the sound it makes as it clears the net with little to spare. "Ooof!", though, was Roddick’s reaction after it was revealed that so much effort, so much drama, had been for nothing, or, more accurately, for the £301,250 pocket money which is banked by the loser.
The boy from Omaha in Nebraska, the birth place of the late Marlon Brando, was never likely to go quietly, nor without panache. He wore the mantle of the loser quite magnificently having given Federer the game of these championships. "I threw the kitchen sink at him but he went to the bathroom and got his tub," said Roddick to loud applause afterwards. In the end he was left to deliver his own version of the "I could have been a contender" speech delivered so famously by Brando in On the Waterfront. Roddick could have been a Wimbledon champion if only he’d sustained his earlier accuracy that was married to awesome power, and - curse the gods! - if only there had been no rain breaks, which, certainly in the third set, acted to deflect the American from his purpose.
He was a break up in the third when the rain came, prompting the second delay of the afternoon. Federer emerged from this unscheduled interval the stronger and while before Roddick’s play had been shot through with courage there seemed a certain desperation about him as his opponent clawed back the third set from the brink of defeat and then took the fourth after breaking Roddick in the significant seventh game. It had been a scintillating two and a half hours of tennis, as we had the right to expect from the No1 and two seeds, the first time this has happened in a men’s singles final at Wimbledon since John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors in 1982.
There was sorrow that there had to be a loser, but with Federer in the house there is no shame in coming second. And Roddick grew in stature yesterday, reacting to defeat in the same dignified manner as deposed ladies’ singles champion Serena Williams the previous day. Both have remained true to the principles of Wimbledon, declaring they lost to the better player on the day.
Roddick, clearly, has not turned out the way we expected him to. When he exploded onto the scene three years ago, the boy from the Nebraskan badlands was supposed to be the new brat on the block. With his cap flipped the wrong way round, and, wearing a month-long growth round his chops as he was yesterday, he certainly looks the part. But yesterday he was sportsmanship personified. The Centre Court loved him for it, and he received - and accepted - a rousing standing ovation.
There remained, though, instances when the child in him reared its head. At one stage an abrupt loud noise, emitted from behind Federer by a falling camera, shattered the hush of the Centre Court, and momentarily ate away the nervous tension. Roddick fanned his behind with his racket, and shouted out: "Sorry!" Later he spoke of his annoyance at missing out on the first dance at the Champions’ ball with Maria Sharapova, even though this is no longer the practice. "I just want to know how long her skirt’s going to be - is it going to be short, is it going to be long? I might just crash the party. I’ll bring the beer, man. Let’s go."
He won hearts, if not the title, and with Federer around that is perhaps as much as the best of the rest can hope to do.
The full article contains 782 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
