In the third set of Saturday's doubles match, just after the Bryan brothers had broken for the first time and put one hand firmly on the Davis Cup, the big screen at the top of Memorial Coliseum flashed back to the last time the U.S. was in this position, in 1995. That was against the Russians as well, and the screen was full of the man who beat them single-handedly and in dramatic fashion that year, Pete Sampras. I looked toward the sideline to see whether the player he beat to clinch that weekend, Yevgeny Kafelnikov, happened to be watching. Instead, it was Andy Roddick who was standing, his full attention on the screen above. When the clip ended and Sampras was shown saying, "it was one of the greatest accomplishments of my career," Roddick clapped loudly and nodded in satisfaction.
Those well-known pictures of Sampras winning and falling to the clay in agony must have been an inspiration to Roddick for years, but his relationship to them was about to change. After seven years of toiling in Ostrava, Bratislava, Seville, Göteborg, and dozen of other far-flung tennis outposts, he wasn't going to have to live up to those legendary images anymore.
Neither were James Blake and Patrick McEnroe, or Mardy Fish and Robby Ginepri, for that matter. That's because their teammates, the Bryan brothers, after two close sets, had broken the serves and spirits of their Russian opponents Nikolay Davydenko and Igor Andreev. The Bryans would get one more break for good measure, and after Bob popped a volley off the court and into the stands, this generation of American men finally had a team title to call their own.
The third point in the tie was never seriously in doubt Saturday, but for a set and a half it hadn't exactly been easy. One shot-maker can do a lot of damage on a doubles court, even if the format isn't his specialty, and Igor Andreev proved that today. We know he has one of the most explosive forehands around, but watching it up close I was surprised by how viciously he cuts at it. In his practice session in the morning I thought he was swinging as hard as he could just for the hell of it. But as the match began it was clear this was how he hits it all the time—by the end of the match I was half-expecting his arm to fly off.
To warm them up for Andreev, the Bryans had asked Robby Ginepri to hit his forehand "as hard as he could." That's about all you can do to get ready for it, but Andreev still set the bros back on their heels with a few nasty returns and mid-court bullets. More surprising was Andreev's skill around the net. Despite his beyond-extreme forehand grip, he adjusted well up there and knocked off a series of angled backhand volleys, including one that he flicked in the opposite direction at the last second. The Russians stayed back even on their first serves and never poached—returns from the Bryans that would have been mauled by most teams floated down the middle of the court unharmed—but they still matched the Americans hold for hold.
No matter how vicious, you can only rely on ground strokes for so long against a net-crowding team who knows what it's doing. The Russians went up 3-1 in the tiebreaker, but that's when they finally fell back to earth. The turnaround came at 3-3, when Bob outrallied Andreev in a crosscourt forehand exchange. Three points later, Andreev, hero of the first 12 games, double-faulted the set away for the Russians. When Davydenko was broken one game later, the floodgates were open.
At that point, the Bryans appeared to begin moving in fast forward. They walked more quickly between points, knuckle-bumped in a hurry, and snapped off their volleys with more disdain. Each of them foot-faulted at least once—they may have just been in too much of a rush to throw themselves into the court and put the team one point closer to the Cup.
As for the Russians, they kept firing forehands into the Bryans defenses but couldn't find a way through. Three blasts from the baseline would just lead to a fourth that flew long. The Bryans kept moving forward, into the Russian attack—Mike knocked one forehand volley for a winner as he was ducking. The Bryans crowded closer and closer to the net, as if it were the finishing line for the Davis Cup and they were in a neck-and-neck race to pound each ball away. Two points before they reached that finish line, the crowd made them pause for a deafening roar and the big-screen camera panned to Roddick, who had tears in his eyes.
Throughout the week, Roddick said that even after seven years, getting to play Davis Cup for his country remained a "surreal experience." When a reporter told him that his win Friday tied him with Arthur Ashe for Davis Cup victories, Roddick looked dumbstruck. He was silent for a second, then said that hearing his name with Ashe's was "insane."
Unlike the Bryans, Fish, or Blake, Roddick still strikes me as an accidental tennis player, a guy who might have naturally gone to baseball or basketball. He says his parents didn't know anything about tennis when they were younger, but they liked individual sports so they put his older brother, John, in a clinic as a kid. Eventually Andy followed him onto the court.
Roddick is a cocky guy, no question, but he still brings a "do I really deserve to be here?" attitude to representing the U.S. The fact that he's had to live with names like Agassi, Sampras, and Courier ringing in his ears hasn't helped. When he reached No. 1 in 2003, he might have plausibly believed that he was going to succeed them as the next great American champion. It hasn't worked out that way in the Grand Slams, but that's only made the quest to win a Cup—a tradition among top U.S. players—that much more important to Roddick.
Today's win is the culmination of years of team effort from a group of guys who have taken a lot of criticism. But it's Roddick's win more than anyone else's. He's the guy who has played everywhere, played hurt, and made a specialty of clinching ties. His dedication to DC, which has been deeper for a longer period of time than Sampras' or Agassi's was, let people know that the U.S. cared about the event again. For years, the best American players were more committed to winning individual major titles than Davis Cup titles; now the U.S. may be more committed to the team concept than any other country (we'll see what happens now that they've won it, but that's not a question for today). One reason the Americans won this weekend is simply that all of their best players were there, while one of Russia's, Marat Safin, didn't show.
We could hear the boys coming in the press room today. Blake, Roddick, Ginepri, Pat Mac, the Bryans, John Isner, Donald Young, and other assorted hangers-on chanted "U.S.A.!" on the way in. They careened through the door with cups in their hands, their hats on sideways, and what I can only assume was beer all over their shirts. As Roddick sat down, he yelled to the room at large, "I'm not answering sh--!"
When it comes to his place in U.S. Davis Cup history, he doesn't have to anymore.