Andy Roddick to resume Wimbledon title quest
It’s almost impossible to imagine a single player in the Wimbledon draw this year who will be hungrier for the title than Andy Roddick.
Yes, Roger Federer will be keen to grow his Grand Slam title collection to number 17. Sure, Rafael Nadal will be champing at the bit to win back the title his dodgy knees denied him the opportunity to defend in 2009. Of course, Andy Murray will be gunning to release the pressure valve on the quest for a British champion at the All England Club.
Roddick though will be motivated by the one that got away. After playing what may well have been the match of his life against Federer in last year’s final and coming up heartbreakingly short, he should be burning with the desire to be crowned Wimbledon champion in 2010.
Those four hours and 16 minutes, 77 games (a record for a Wimbledon final), 27 aces served and 50 that whistled past, not to mention all the work that went into reaching the decider, must have felt like they amounted to nothing as Roddick flung his racquet and headed to the chair at the end of it all.
It was Roddick’s third defeat by Federer in the final of the grass-court major, but never had the American come so close to grasping that coveted trophy.
No player at the All England Club will have a greater motivation than that this year.
The big question now is: has Roddick’s best chance at becoming a Wimbledon champion now passed him by?
A third-round loss to world No. 63 ranked Dudi Sela at the Aegon Championships last week wasn’t exactly a promising start to Roddick’s Wimbledon preparations, but he wasn’t alone in that as the top seeds dropped like flies at the Queen’s Club and Federer lost the final of the Gerry Weber Open in Halle to Lleyton Hewitt.
Few of the big Wimbledon chances could claim to have had an ideal warm-up at Queen’s but the big-hitting, big-serving Roddick has sought to compensate for that lack of match time at that tournament by heading to the exhibition Tennis Classic at Hurlington, along with the likes of Hewitt and French Open runner-up Robin Soderling.
Perhaps too, Roddick’s result at Queen’s was born partly of rust after missing all but the French Open (where he reached the third round) in the clay-court season, partly through choice and then due to a stomach virus.
Before that though, the 27-year-old was in top form on the hard courts in America, reaching the final of the Masters 1000 tournament in Indian Wells, and winning the title at the Miami Masters 1000. They are results that suggest Roddick’s best form is not too far away, and if he can play himself through the first couple of rounds at Wimbledon the rest should start to flow for the 2003 US Open champion.
There are few players without a Wimbledon title to their name who know better than Roddick just what it takes to win one, and the world No. 7 should again be right in the mix this year. Whether he can lay to rest the heartbreak of 2009 by hoisting the trophy at the end of the tournament, well, we’ll find out the answer to that in just over a couple of week’s time.
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