So now we're talking James and Andy, Nos. 4 and 6 in the world, respectively. Here's something that occurs to me, right off the bat: James is now perched two steps higher on a ladder on which the rungs are spaced increasingly further the higher you go. He was also 2-0 vs. Andy this year, after losing the first six times the men played. He had 5 titles to Andy's one. But the bottom line is: Andy is still the man when it comes to U.S. tennis.
You could be cynical and say this is because he's been anointed as such (all those AM - EX commercials, all those mainstream media call-outs!), and, as they say, a reputation is a lot easier to get than it is to lose. But the reality is that Roddick vaulted the two largest hurdles to like-it-or-not Superstardom (unless your name is Thomas Johansson, or Gaston Gaudio) in a media-saturated environment way back in 2003, when he won a Grand Slam (the U.S. Open) and then took a turn sitting on the seat of the dunk tank when he became No. 1.
Those things matter; they matter more than anything.
So the identities of the hunter and hunted in this scenario are obvious, and outlined in black pencil. And that only makes the upcoming year that much more tantalizing, especially for U.S. fans. Some of our international readers may roll their eyes and think, How typically American is it, to make it seem as if a Roddick-Blake rivalry matters, when Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have, for two years now, divvied up tennis into two powerful, distinct kingdoms: red clay nation (Nadal's domain), and the hard court empire of The Mighty Fed.
Well, I think it does matter, for all kinds of reasons, starting with the naked fact that when American tennis is healthy, tennis in general is far, far better off. And Andy and James snatched the American game off the pyre just when it appeared that things couldn't get much worse. Furthermore, they did it with the kind of panache and uplifting backstory of which any classically minded tennis fan would approve. For James and Andy are a tennis buddy movie waiting to be filmed. Each of them, in his own way, is already an overachiever. Each of them comes across as a decent guy, representing different facets of a common culture.
Boy Andy is often called a "frat boy", and if you could wipe the sneer off the term's face, it would be an accurate description. He's raw-boned and powerful, a native of Nebraska who comes armed with country-boy shrewdness, an earthy sense of humor, and just enough of an edge to underscore that his persona is authentic. He may be a little short (physically) for the comparison to be perfect, but I think of him as having the game of a good, college power-forward in basketball - that is, his ball skills are suspect, but his ability to stand his ground, throw elbows, and get the job done is not. And I always felt that a player with power-forward sensibilities in a game with as much of a lingering, wussie quotient as tennis has some serious advantages going in. I think Andy has proven that.
Blake, by contrast, is coming out of a more mainstream tennis tradition, despite his status as a representative of "diversity" - a diversity that seems to me a perfect emblem of the new, emerging mainstream in the U.S., which throws in to question the entire "diversity" trope. So don't blink. James is sophisticated, contemplative, and in many ways a less likely candidate for tennis stardom than was Boy Andy. But here's something: I saw Andy play in the Orange Bowl - could it have been 1998? - and he lost in the first round of the 18-and-understo some kid from Sweden named Adaktusson.
If it seems like the trip from Harvard to the Top 5 has been an improbable, slow one, filled with surprises, I respectfully submit that the path from gangly geekdom to the summit of the game, fueled to a large degree by pure, unadulterated Testosterone (isn't that what desire really is, at the end of the day?) is no stroll through park, either.
In fact, to extend the basketball analogy, Blake reminds me of certain point-guards. He makes things happen; he raises the pace and tone of the game; he may not distribute the ball (there's no "team" in "I"!), but he shows the individualistic equivalent of the flashy, mercurial moves of a point-guard who does. And then there's the flaw: like the point-guard denied Superstardom because he isn't your go-to guy when you're down a point with four ticks left, Blake has yet to confirm his status on the Grand Slam stage - where it most matters, at the most critical of times. Those two hurdles that Roddick has cleared are still waiting, and they're coming up fast.
