You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
The borders of our lives.
And you read your Emily Dickinson,
And I my Robert Frost,
And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what we’ve lost.
— Paul Simon
LONDON — If you want some poetic justice, try some Emily Dickinson or maybe some Robert Frost.
Forget sports.
After all, it only made sense that Andy Roddick would go deep into Wimbledon’s second week. Last year, he endured one of the noblest losses in tennis history when he went down to Roger Federer 16-14 in the fifth in a memorable, at times agonizing marathon.
Roddick was widely celebrated as a brave heart warrior whose time would come. And things were looking good for him this year. He reached the Indian Wells final, beat Rafael Nadal in Miami and went on to collect his first Masters Series title since Cincy in ’06.
Okay, A-Rod’s clay-court season and his grass-court warm-up were forgettable. But once in the friendly confines of Wimbledon, he did what he had to do. Yes, he dropped two sets en route to the fourth round, but for the moment, the seas about were calm.
The stats were in his favor.
Roddick had beaten Yen-Hsun Lu three straight times, including two wins this spring. Lu, No. 82 in the world, was the lowest ranked player still in the men’s draw. In the 19 majors Lu had played, he had never reached the fourth round. And his Wimbledon record was worse. The 27-year-old had lost here four straight times and in all of tennis, no Asian had reached a quarterfinal since Japan’s Shuzo Matsuoka at the ’95 U.S. Open.
In other words, Andy Roddick, the No. 5 seed, was more than a slight favorite.
But poet and pundit alike knew full well that Wimbledon is played on grass, not paper. And after Andy dropped a disheartening 4-6, 7-6(3), 7-6(4), 6-7(5), 9-7 decision to Lu, Roddick did not go gently into the night. It wasn’t so much a matter of his failure to capitalize on two set points to take a two-set lead. And, yes, last year Roddick had four set points to take a two-set lead against Federer in the final. And the problem was not his serve. He wasn’t broken until the 16th game of the fifth set. It was more a matter of the way Roddick played his first three sets.
“I was playing horrendously,” he confided. “I mean really, really badly. I mean, to the point where I was trying to think of how to put balls in the court…[My ballstriking] didn’t feel clean. It didn’t feel good.” Plus, his return didn’t feel good either. According to A-Rod, “[It] was crap. It was really bad.”
And Lu was good. Calm and controlled and never overwhelmed by the big match on the relatively small (Court Two) arena, he played within himself and took his time. He served strong, controlled the middle of the court, stuck with his game plan, took risks, took advantage of the space Roddick gave him and bravely knifed a clutch volley on break point in the fifth.
In other words, he played inspired ball, while Roddick – for all his heroics in last year’s final — played from too deep in the court and lost two key tiebreaks in the second and third sets and, more importantly, for the third time in four Slams Andy exited by losing a fifth set. (Remember his third-round loss to John Isner late one night at the U.S. Open or to Marin Cilic at the Aussie Open?) Roddick’s loss meant that American men would be suffering their worst title drought at majors since 1914.
John McEnroe had an explanation for A-Rod’s loss. “He played so passively, so tentatively that it’s going to be a tough one to overcome.”
But Roddick struggled to explain it all. He couldn’t get in touch with his inner-Andy. Asked whether he was stunned by the loss, he could only offer, “I always struggle with how to describe my mood.”
This certainly is unsparing advice (so we apologize in advance). But maybe America’s finest male player, who’s suffered so many adverse results at Slams since he won the Open in ’03, should explore his feelings and emotions and maybe even try a little free verse. Maybe then, dare we say, he’d win a Slam — a poetry Slam.
