Strange Bedfellows

!Pic by Pete Bodo

Andy Roddick and Juan Carlos Ferrero are on track to meet in the quarterfinals in Shanghai. Or maybe it will be the Admiral's Club or Advantage Lounge at the Beijing airport. After all, Roddick is 29, Ferrero is 31. Neither one is in the Top 10 at this point (Roddick is No. 16, Ferrero a mere No. 69). Neither is the Next Big Thing, but once upon a time both of them were just that, and the twists and turns their careers have taken are as interesting as they are complex and, in the big picture, surprising.

Just thinking about these two guys brings a smile to my face, because their careers ran on largely unnoticed but parallel if wildly different tracks ever since they met as relative youngsters in the U.S. Open final of 2003, which Roddick won, 6-3, 7-6 (2), 6-3.

At the time, it looked like these two could become major rivals—a warm-up act for what might follow in Roger Federer vs. Rafael Nadal. Things didn't work out that way, though, and what they share is a history of somehow being left behind, victims either of the evolution of the game, their own shortcomings, fate (in the form of superior rivals)—perhaps a little bit of all three. They certainly are strange bedfellows, but consider the similarities:

—Roddick and Ferrero have each won one Grand Slam title and it was in the same year, 2003. Ferrero won the French Open and Roddick bagged the U.S. Open, beating Ferrero in the final. Ferrero finished runner-up at two majors in his career; Roddick finished second at four Grand Slam events.

—Each of them earned the No. 1 ranking and only held it briefly. Ferrero was the 21st player to rank No. 1 on the ATP computer, achieving the pinnacle on Sept. 8, 2003, and he held the spot for just eight weeks—until Roddick snatched it away on Nov. 3 and remained on top for 13 weeks. Federer dethroned Roddick on February 2 of the following year and held the top spot for a record 237 weeks, until Rafael Nadal stripped him of it. Which brings us to:

—The men who ensured neither Roddick nor Ferrero would taste ambrosia for more than a few weeks were also major factors in the larger careers of the two men. Although Roddick has struggled with a number of opponents, Federer is his nemesis. Roddick is 2-20 against Federer, but perhaps more important, Federer denied Roddick the Wimbledon title in three finals (he stopped him in a semi as well), including the epic that deserves a place among the greatest matches of the Open era, the 2009 final, in which Federer triumphed 16-14 in the fifth.

Ferrero's nemesis was Rafael Nadal, but in a more complicated way than mere tournament records suggest. Oddly, the Spanish countrymen have never met at a Grand Slam event, and Nadal leads their career head-to-head by 7-2 (Roddick is 3-7 vs. Nadal. Why am I not surprised, given the theme here?). But what’s more interesting is that Nadal is also the guy who stole the hearts of Iberia from Ferrero.

Nadal shot from No. 47 to No. 2 between December of 2003 and the end of the 2005. In that same period, Ferrero went from No. 3 to No. 31 (year-end for 2004) and, finally, No. 18 (over the same period, Roddick went from No. 1 to No. 3).  People will tell you that Ferrero became a little too enamored of life in the fast lane after he hit No. 1, but at tht same time Nadal was nothing less than a sensation—both at home and abroad. So much so that it was pretty easy to forget Juan Carlos Ferrero. It must have been a devastating blow to Ferrero's ego, and it only got worse when Nadal became the toast of the Spanish Davis Cup team.

Ferrero has suffered injuries, and that helps account for the roller-coaster nature of his rankings history. But in many ways he was left behind once Nadal hit his stride—just like Federer's mastery of Roddick has prevented the American from attaining the kind of credibility and record he's worked so hard to attain.

—The evolution of the game was equally unkind to both men. The year before Ferrero won the French title, he was the runner-up. In one of the most memorable demonstrations of choking, he lost that match to one-slam wonder Albert Costa. That was, more than anything, an aberration—an unfortunate incident that could happen to anyone (at least anyone good enough to reach the final at Roland Garros, which leaves out quite a few people).

The upset by Costa did not change the fact that Ferrero was thought to have the biggest forehand in the game, and despite his relatively small size (he's listed at 6' and 160 pounds, but that could be stretching it), he was described as a baseline power-player—a characterization reinforced by his excellent serve and solid two-handed backhand. It turned out that Ferrero was foreshadowing an entire new wave of players, many of them from his countrymen, who would do what he does but slightly better, and with more power.

Like Ferrero, Roddick was once known for his atomic forehand, but he, too, was a victim of the changing game. Here and elsewhere, you can still hear people asking, "Whatever happened to that big forehand that Roddick rode to the No. 1 ranking?" Maybe nothing happened to it. Maybe it just isn't as big as it once was, or appeared to be, and maybe his opponents are so much stronger and fitter these days.

However, it's also true that in his search to unlock the secrets of Grand Slam glory, Roddick so de-emphasized the forehand that it actually is less powerful. It's certainly not the centerpiece of his ground game anymore, even though his serve remains as effective as ever.

A few years ago, Nick Bollettieri floated the idea that it's no longer enough to have "a weapon." These days, he suggested, you need at least two weapons. That may or may not be true, but it puts Roddick's situation into perspective. Only one of his shots—the serve—can really be called a big weapon these days. Whatever the case, in the span of just a few years, both Ferrero and Roddick lost their ability to dictate and dominate the way each once did.

—In the big picture, Ferrero’s career has been somewhat puzzling, and marred by wild fluctuations. However, he also seems happily adjusted to his lot in life and at 31 still appears to love the game—maybe he loves it more than ever, now that he’s neither a kid nor a top contender having to grapple with issues like rivals in his homeland.

Roddick was luckier that way; Mardy Fish spent almost his entire career as an underachiever (or at least an under-committer) before he became a threat—not only on the ATP tour, but to Roddick himself, whom Fish surpassed last year as the No. 1 U.S. player. You could almost say that Fish might have been to Roddick something like what Nadal was to Ferrero. To Roddick’s good fortune, it didn’t work out that way.

—Well, the kind of synchronicity we’re talking about here can’t be too conspicuous, or too predictable. So the final and oddly intriguing detail in these intertwined careers is that despite the similarities, there’s absolutely no rivalry between these two. In five meetings, including two Masters Series and one Grand Slam, Ferrero has managed to win no matches and just two sets. Their closest encounter was in Cincinnati in 2005, where Ferrero won the first set tiebreaker, 7-3, but lost the second, 7-5.

Maybe it’s better that way. Strange bedfellows ought not to have anything to keep them awake at night.