by Pete Bodo
Andy Roddick may wish the season were shorter, but I'm guessing he wishes his own year would be longer—after all, he was one of "elite eight" who mix it up at the ATP year-end championships for eight consecutive years. His best results in the season-ending playoff, which is second in importance only to Grand Slam events, were semifinal losses in 2003 (to Roger Federer), 2004 (to Lleyton Hewitt), and 2007 (to David Ferrer).
Roddick, now pushing 30, was beaten today in the third round of the Paris Masters 1000 by Andy Murray. So he's done for the year, which must seem as strange to him as it does to us. The only positive spin you can put on it is that his upcoming, atypically long off-season (for Roddick and most of the other losers in Paris, it will be about a two-month break from competition) may give Roddick a chance to re-group, perhaps to re-think his approach to the game in the waning days of his career.
The fact that Murray, the ATP No. 3, is playing some of the finest tennis of his life these days is scant consolation for Roddick (Murray is 27-1 over the past three months, and won three tournaments on the Asian circuit before heading to Europe to end the year). The match that ended Roddick's campaign for the year was a 6-2, 6-2 rout, and will only add fuel to the speculation that Roddick is on an irreversible downhill slide. He'll finish outside the Top 10 (he's currently No. 15) this year for the first time since 2001, and his final 2011 match record is 34-16.
What began as a symbolic changing-of-the-guard when Roddick's long-time friend Mardy Fish moved past him and became the highest-ranked man from the U.S. (at No. 11) back at the end of March has become the main storyline for American men's tennis this year. At the time, Fish said, "I don't think I would ever feel like I was the No. 1 American. Andy has had a pretty good career. You can put his career on top of mine about six times. He's always going to be the top dog in my generation."
It was a sensitive thing to say, and the right thing to say—at least until the rest of the year unspooled. But while No. 9 Fish was able to maintain his momentum and will finish the year on a high note—replacing Roddick in the increasingly familiar role of lone American at the World Tour Finals—Roddick fluctuated and ended up ranked slightly below where he stood when Fish passed him by over seven months ago.
Frankly, I doubt that this stuff matters—at all—to either man. They're close in age (Roddick will turn 30 at the end of next August, Fish turned 30 in September), and both have already done the heavy lifting of career. Unless Fish has a truly big statement—a Wimbledon or U.S. Open title, anyone?—left in his arm, his career will always be overshadowed by Roddick's. But this begs the question, why is it that Fish can still be arcing upward, when so much breath and ink has been wasted by pundits and critics on the question, "What's wrong with Andy Roddick?"
The answer seems pretty obvious. Fish has always had enormous talent; he just mucked around wasting it for a long time. He found religion late in his career (the turning point was at the end of 2009), when he adopted a new fitness and practice regimen, as well as diet restrictions that enabled him to shed 30 pounds of mostly fat. Starting in 2010, Fish was the player Roddick had been his entire life—a dedicated professional. And Fish is still enjoying the pride and sense of purpose and satisfaction that yields.
The problem I see when it comes to Roddick is that he has evolved from the raw-boned, exuberant, energetic ace-machine of his youth to become a sounder and technically (and tactically) better player. But in so doing, he become a player torn between two poles, neither Fish nor fowl. And that, almost by definition, is a fatal flaw.
Think about it: Would Roddick have experimented and tried so many new things—and this guy has turned over every rock in the field, looking to improve—if that big, ball-banging game had been just plain good enough for him to feel comfortable? I don't think so. Roddick is undoubtedly one of the smartest men out there. There's no way he would have abandoned a winning game if he felt he could ride it to greater glory, because players just don't get anywhere near the top by doing that. In Roddick's case, he had to develop his baseline game because he didn't move well enough to beat the handful of players ranked above him, particularly Roger Federer, with the serve-forehand combination that launched his early success.
Roddick basically went looking for a few pieces that were missing from his puzzle, and the lack of which made him increasingly vulnerable—especially as the game changed and he lost that mysterious, explosive drive of his youth. He just never found those pieces—at least not all of them, or enough of them, for long enough, to win that elusive second major, or those Wimbledon titles the nimble Federer snatched out from under his nose. How badly could Roddick have managed his career if, for the brunt of it, the only thing that kept him down to one major was the greatest Grand Slam champion of them all?
In the end, my view is that Roddick didn't underachieve, outsmart himself, or lose his way. The idea that he could somehow serve and power his way to more Grand Slam titles if only he adopted a more aggressive mindset seems silly. You don't last on the pro tour if you follow your mind; you last if you follow your game, squeeze the most out of your strengths, and do the utmost to protect your weaknesses. Roddick's biggest problem, now as ever, is that protecting his weaknesses also undermined his ability to exercise his greatest strengths.
Thus, the only thing that looked more unproductive than Roddick galumphing around way behind the baseline was Roddick trying to take the ball on the rise and attack with quickness he doesn't possess. Also, no player has been hurt more by the general slowing down of the court surfaces, and by the ever-increasing emphasis on quality returning (and the equipment that enables it), than Roddick. As he said after he lost to Murray: "If I'm not able to get my serve through the court or drive a ball deep to the corner and get rewarded for it, I'm going to struggle most times against Andy."
Roddick certainly saw glimpses of the kingdom he wished to inherit. Who can forget that masterful, all-around triumph at the 2010 Miami Masters? The only trouble is that Roddick just couldn't play that kind of all-around game for that long against that many players on a regular basis. But that title certainly showed that Roddick hadn't been wasting all that time working on his game.
So what does 2012 bode for Roddick? It's hard to say, but anyone who's spent a little time around him knows that he loves the game—loves it in all its strategic, tactical and technical nuances. And let's face it, in his own mind, that second major—more specifically, that Wimbledon title—is still a bit of unfinished business. And when you have a serve like Roddick's, you'd be crazy to give up dreaming about that ultimate triumph until you can no longer lift your arm.