TENNIS in DEPTH.

Andy Roddick would be a resoundingly popular winner of the US Open, six years after his victory here and the memorable press conference first liner about ‘you can forget all that future of American tennis crap’. Though Sam Querrey, his fellow American, won the US Open Series as the most consistent performer through the past month of hard court earnestness in tricky conditions, Roddick reached the final in Washington, the semis of the Montreal Masters (losing both times to Juan Martin Del Potro of Argentina) and his only blemish was a first round defeat to Querrey in Cincinnati.

But all roads, at this time, seems to wind their way back to the 16-14 final set defeat to Federer on another momentous July afternoon. “I feel like maybe a bigger story was made of it than what I was feeling,” Roddick said on the eve of the Open, where he plays Bjorn Phau of Germany on the first Monday night session.

“There was never a point where I was going to just lay down afterwards or not come back and play hard or, you know, anything like that. If you look at the tournament as a whole, it was a very good event. I would have loved to have changed the last five minutes of it, but you look forward to another opportunity. The kind of the support I got from fans, from peers, from everybody, was pretty surprising in the best way possible and pretty humbling. For some reason I think that match hit home with a lot of people, and you know, maybe — I didn’t realise it. Obviously when you’re in London, you realise that it’s a big deal there and you kind of understand it, but I was really surprised when I had got back here as to how many people watched it and were affected by it. To be honest, that really helped the process.

“For the first two or three weeks afterwards I think it (my perspective) changed daily. But like anything, the more you distance yourself from it, you start remembering, the better things about it as opposed to the most disappointing things about it. You know, I promise you, I wish more than anything that I would have won that tournament, but at the same time, I’m still going to move on and keep going with the plan that we’ve set in place, because I feel like it is working.”

Roddick’s progress on the playing side has established his place back inside the world’s top five and there is no doubt he represents a real threat to the top order. And America is ever more ready for a standard bearer.

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