NEW YORK—Wednesday is to the week what the color beige is to a painter’s palette; it’s the “blah” day, saved only by the feeling that Wednesday also is over-the-hump day at work. This has nothing to do with anything that actually happens on Wednesday, because usually nothing much does; you just pull silently for Wednesday to crawl by and get you to the downhill side of the work week. And even that’s anti-climactic because it always does.
But in tennis, Wednesday—yesterday’s Wednesday, anyway—was a very different story. Call it wild Wednesday, or “wacky” or “weepy” or “weird” or even “woebegotten” Wednesday, because it was anything but a dull day at the U.S. Open. Andy Roddick retired, the No. 3 seeds in both the men’s and women’s draw got a terrible scare, and world No. 1 Roger Federer was eliminated by Tomas Berdych.
I have no idea what Thursday can do for an encore; the only clash of titans pits Juan Martin del Potro against No. 2 seed Novak Djokovic in the late match on Arthur Ashe Stadium. So let’s do a quick review:
Once Roddick took his foot off the gas and lost that second set tiebreaker to del Potro (after winning the first set in a tiebreaker), a sensation of inevitability crept into the proceedings. Sure, Andy might recover and find a way to topple the “Tower of Tandil;” stranger things have happened, even just in these past 10 days.
But the end that Roddick had pronounced just days earlier seemed to draw him with something like gravity, or a magnetic force; it was as if destiny would not be subverted by romance. Roddick knew it, too, and allowed himself to be drawn along. As he said when it was over:
“You know, playing the last five games was pretty hard. Once I got down a break I could barely look at my box. . . It was tough. Once he (del Potro) kind of got up there in that match it was a different set of circumstances than my previous matches.
“You know, then you start thinking about, how real it is and a lot of thoughts go through your head. You're thinking about matches you're playing when you're 12, or you're thinking about you know. . . I was thinking about my mom driving me to practices all over the place. You just think about a million things.
“Then all of a sudden you have to play a point against one of the best players in the world. It certainly was a mixed bag there at the end.”
That’s Roddick, at his articulate best in a tough, emotionally-fraught moment. Ironically, you also had the sense that, when it was all over, this was the least painful of Roddick’s 12 losses at the U.S. Open. It was time, and Andy knew it. He also knew that he didn’t have it in him to, as the poet said, “rage, rage against the dying of the light” in the manner of Jimmy Connors. Becoming a faux Jimbo has been a career-long temptation for Roddick, and he was wise to avoid it to the end.
That final press conference yesterday evening, conducted while Roddick’s pal Serena Williams quietly wept for him in the women’s locker room, was a gem—less for what was revealed than for the tone of it. Roddick was appropriately thoughtful, his customary appetite for repartee and verbal sparring quelled by the solemnity of it all, as if he only just then realized that this was it. For real. For keeps. For good.
And that was only right, for everything leading up to the match point del Potro converted yesterday was prelude (for the record, that final stroke of Roddick’s career was an errant forehand off a fierce del Potro cross-court forehand that pulled the American way off the court). It was all part of the big show, a vibrant and electric portion of the larger, ongoing, living tournament. In other words, despite Roddick’s decision to make his plans known, retirement wasn’t for real. The career wasn’t over until it was over. And when it was, it had the grace of finality about it.
By contrast, that sense of inevitability was utterly absent from the wins posted by Maria Sharapova and Andy Murray. Sharapova found herself embroiled in a desperate battle with Marion Bartoli, and barely emerged with the win. And Murray had the British press corps in conniptions as he spotted Marin Cilic a huge lead before reeling him in, reminding us once again that the big Croatian’s mind is not nearly as reliable as his big forehand.
Murray lost his serve four times in the first two sets and spotted the No. 12 seed a two-set advantage (6-3, 7-6). “He got nervous towards the end of that (second) set once I got one of the breaks back, which helped me,” said Murray. “And then from 5-all in the second set I played a great match after that.”
All true, but as good as Murray can be at the top of his game, how can anyone rationalize or justify how easily Cilic, the 6’6” giant, became the incredible shrinking man? By the time Murray was done with him, Stuart Little would have looked like Wilt Chamberlain standing alongside Cilic.
In one of the most comprehensive and improbable of comebacks, Murray reeled off 17 of the final 20 games, including 11 in a row to end the match. By the time the end drew near you could be forgiven for believing that instead of wandering into Armstrong, you’d stumbled into a pleasant Murray dream sequence.
Not that most pundits and fans rued Murray’s fightback; one of the main subtexts of this tournament was that it would be the venue for the decisive struggle in the best-of-three clash of champions pitting Murray against Federer—a head-to-head grapple played out oceans apart over the course of a sensible period of about 60 days.
Federer won the first meeting, the Wimbledon final. Murray leveled when he snatched the Olympic gold medal, leaving Federer the silver. And here’s the weird thing: I’ll bet that 90 percent of the people keenly anticipating the rubber match here at the U.S. Open in the semifinals unconsciously—and justifiably—assumed that the date was Murray’s to make. Federer would be there waiting in the semis, as he had been in attendance for anyone fate threw at him for the past eight years.
Well, weepy or wacky or weird, this Wednesday had one more surprise in store as night fell across damp and humid New York. That was Berdych’s upset of Federer. Berdych periodically unleashes all that power he has in matches with Federer, and this was one of those occasions—even if the stat sheet suggests that the 40 unforced errors Federer made (almost twice as many as Berdych’s 21) had a good deal to do with the result as well.
“I rarely go through matches where I have no chances, you know,” Federer reminded those who might have mistaken the match for a fearsome, unilateral display by Berdych. “So obviously I missed some tonight again, but that's normal.
“When you end up losing at the end, you know, you always hope that you made every chance you had. It's just not possible. He probably created more than I did, and that's why he ended up winning tonight. The power is not really the issue here. I don't think that was a problem for me. The problem was elsewhere.”
You can take “created” in this application as code for “took charge,” but at this point the rhetorical details of the post-mortems, the salve applied to the wounded pride, hardly matter. “The problem was elsewhere” . . . but we know where it will be for the winners tomorrow, and on Saturday. And who knows? Nobody said that henceforth, only Wednesdays can be wild.
For more of Peter Bodo's reports from the 2012 U.S. Open, click here.