by Pete Bodo
NEW YORK—Andy Roddick relishes his role as a mentor to young, aspiring American players; he has them to his home in Austin for week-long practice sessions ("Ryan [Harrison] has been to my house, like, a million times," he says). Roddick helps recruit them as hitting partners for the Davis Cup team, and he's imparted what wisdom he possesses freely and generously. But Roddick had to set that identity aside tonight when he met 18-year-old, recent high-school graduate Jack Sock in a second-round U.S. Open match on Arthur Ashe stadium, and it was surprisingly easy for him to do it.
Could that be because Roddick really needed this win, needed to assert himself and put out a performance that might silence some of the mutterings and whisperings about the state of his game...his mind...his heart...his career?
It's been an eventful week for the pugnacious former No. 1 and 2003 U.S. Open champion. Because of his disappointing results this year, Roddick has drifted out of the Top 20. He's seeded No. 21 here, and nobody has been talking up his chances—not even as a long shot, or sentimental favorite. Ornery and confrontational at times, he lashed out after his first match here at television commentators and others who were second guessing his basic approach to the game, and the strategies he's pursued, making the case that the only thing wrong with way he's playing is his poor level of execution.
Against this backdrop, the beleaguered star needed to play a gifted and confident youth from his own nation like he needed a hole in the head. The last thing he wanted at this point was to wind up on the wrong end of a real or imagined "passing the torch" experience. He's not only enough of a veteran to have understood the pitfalls and perils latent in the match he had to play tonight, he was sufficiently realistic about them to meet the situation head-on, at full speed, right from the get-go.
It was a good thing, too, because Sock immediately revealed that he was not the least bit nervous or intimidated by his debut on the biggest stage of the American game. Serving first, Sock opened the ball with a service winner, and promptly added an ace. At that point, the voice of a mature woman called out from somewhere high up in the stadium, "Come on, Andy, god-damn it!!!"
Forgive me for quoting the blasphemous phrase, but something about her precise phrasing struck a cord, evoking the mixture of anger, frustration and desperation Roddick fans have been feeling lately as they—and worse yet, critics—debate whether Andy is playing from too far back or too far in. . .going for too much or too little with his forehand. . .showing too much or too little patience. The arguments by now are basically circular. A dog chasing its tail. It isn't easy being Andy Roddick these days, because the nature of the debate really defines his "problem" better than does anything else.
Roddick is an in-betweener, a player whose unique combination of strengths and weaknesses dictates that he play a style easily criticized when his execution is lousy and just as handly praised when he's nailing it. Anybody who thinks that Roddick would suddenly vault into the Top 5 if he infringed on the baseline to take the ball and powder monster forehands ought to have his head examined. But when he executes poorly—and let's remember that he plays a game in which movement is critical, without being one of the best movers on the tour—it's extremely tempting to fantasize that he'd find success again if only he played a more overpowering, aggressive game.
But really; does anyone believe that an ATP pro can survive, even in the Top 100, while playing the wrong game—or vault up significantly by playing a substantially different style?
Sock held that first game, thanks largely to impressive serving. Then Roddick put on a serving show of his own. It went on like that, with sparse but exciting and unrestrained rallies now and then, until the fourth game, in which Roddick faltered and faced four breakpoints. He knew what was at stake, given the circumstances:
"Players of a certain ranking who haven't been on that court (Ashe) before come out (playing) above themselves—or not being able to hit much of a ball," said Roddick. "He (Sock) came out and had break points early. He wins those, and I think it's a different dynamic in that set. I was able to fight them off. He had one really good look at a forehand and he missed it. He took a swing at it. Those are the little subtleties in tennis that could mean we'd still be out there. It might have been a little bit more of an uphil battle for me. But then when you get to 2-all, 3-all, it becomes a real scenario as opposed to this thing that...you're just hyped out of your whatever. I think after those break points went by, it became real for him."
It was a convincing assessment, and helps explain how Sock lost the plot in the very next game and gave up a break, quickly and easily. Roddick rolled through the next game at 15 and established control of the match; when he won the first set, 6-3, Roddick fixed Sock with a stare as he went to his chair, as if to say: We'll leave the mentoring for later. Right now, you just need to know who I am.
Roddick wouldn't relinquish the lead, although he was obliged to play the best tennis we've seen from him in many, many months to make it stick. Trouble glimmered on his horizon only once, when Sock broke Roddick back after the older player jumped to a 2-1 lead in the third set. But Roddick put down the insurgency, belting a backhand passing shot winner to break Sock for a 4-3 lead. He ran it out, 6-3, 6-3, 6-4.
The match was better and closer than the score indicates. Sock was remarkably poised and able, under the circumstances, which he summed up pretty neatly afterward, saying: "Obviously when you play on Arthur Ashe stadium at the U.S. Open it feels a lot different than playing at Blue Valley North at the (Kansas) high school state championships."
"I didn't think I'd ever play another guy from Nebraska in my career," Roddick said. He also praised the game of the 2010 junior champion, saying: "I think he's grown about a foot in the last year. His forehand's got some serious RPMs on it. You can't teach that. You can't teach 135 MPH in your arm. You can't teach the ball jumping off the court. So that's good. He's going to have to learn some of the subtleties of the game."
Like relying less on wing-and-a-prayer dropshots to end scorching rallies—something Sock tried too many times tonight, perhaps because he grew anxious or impatient. It would have been easy for him to feel that way, given how expertly Roddick played his groundstrokes and how well he was feeling the ball and staying in the points.
"Yeah, I guess today staying in the points is a good thing," Roddick said, referring obliquely to the criticism that he's rallying too much these days. "It's the way it works. You known, you haven't played [a reference to the tournaments he's missed], you work yourself in. All of a sudden one day you come out and things feel right. You don't have to force it. That's just the way it's always worked in tennis. That's the way it's always gonna work."
As much as Roddick had to focus on his own game, his own problems, he appreciated the ambience and savored the generational sub-plot to the match. He recalled later how much it meant to him when Andre Agassi heeled up in Florida near Roddick's home in the winter of 2000, and then for some weeks after Agassi won the 2001 Australian Open. "I was the No. 1 junior in the world, and good enough to give him practice," Roddick remembered. "I would pull out of tournaments to go hit with for a week because you learn so much. He was my hero. You know, it was surreal...My dad put this court together in our yard and Andre would come over there and hit. So the neighbors who would complain when we were out there hitting balls at 6:00 in the morning all of a sudden would look through the bushes and...they didn't complain any more."
Roddick believes he benefited from those hitting sessions with Agassi. He wasn't thinking about them, or how much they helped, during the match tonight. But Sock later told how, up at the net during the handshake, Roddick said: "You're going to out on that court many more times. You've got a bright future. Come on down (to Austin, TX, where Roddick resides) in the off-season to practice."
Apparently, once you get used to being a mentor, it's a hard gig to give up.