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AUSTRALIAN
ARTHURS SOLVES RODDICK'S GAME
ARod goes down with American
hopes
By
Alix Ramsay
Special to tennisreporters.net
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Susan
Mullane
Camerawork USA, Inc.
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FROM ROLAND GARROS –
The story so far: we are three days in to the rain-sodden Roland
Garros but still stumbling through the first round. America's glorious
past – one Pete Sampras – is already back at home licking
his wounds and is soon to be joined by the man he has tipped as
America's glorious future, otherwise known as Andy Roddick.
This time last year Roddick
left Paris in tears and a taxi. He thought he was in with a shout
of beating Lleyton Hewitt until the small and feisty Australian
took as set from him and began to make him think. Within minutes
he had strained his hamstring and, with lower lip all of a tremble
and tears in his eyes, he limped slowly off the Court Centrale.
Twelve months on and Roddick
was heading for the hills again, chased away by an Australian opponent,
a great deal to live up to and no obvious way out. This time he
was up against Wayne Arthurs, an obstinate, straight
forward sort of player with a belting left handed serve and a very
simple game plan: In the rare event that the first serve is not
an ace, run like the clappers to the net and take it from there.
Such simplicity was just enough to get under Roddick's skin and,
over the course of five sets,
dismantle him 4-6, 7-6, 4-6, 7-5, 6-3.
The thundering service that
has frightened the good and the great was not firing properly –
at time his percentages dropped down to the 40s – while his
habit of hitting every ball as hard as possible was proving to be
as much of a liability as a weapon. The more balls Arthurs got back,
the more Roddick's confidence was rattled. There were times when
he could shred Arthurs with his passing shots and there were others
when he could not hit a barn door at ten paces. And by the time
he got into the fifth set, that stage of the match that separates
the men from the boys, he looked beaten.
THE PLAYERS START TO FIND
THE WEAKNESSES
Roddick, it seems, is suffering from
the terrible twos or the sophomore blues. The first season of playing
with the big boys is always the easiest. Every win makes headlines
and the public and players alike are easily impressed. Come the
second year the public not only expect but demand success while
the boys in the locker room have started to work out the way to
beat you. This is where the hard work starts.
"It's learning and experiencing
things," Roddick said. "My game took me so far. Now, to
crack into the upper echelon, a lot of it is between the ears. Now
I'm going to have to bear down and see what it takes."
Andre Agassi, in his role
as tennis sage, knows exactly what it takes. "The sophomore
year is tougher because people aren't thinking so much about your
strengths, they're thinking about your possible weaknesses,"
he said.
"That's a big transition.
In the beginning it's easy to be impressed with someone's strengths
and then you start thinking, 'OK, I've got to live with this, what
can I do?' Everybody goes through it. "In the end it comes
down to what those weaknesses are and what you can do to improve.
If you don't get better, you're going to get worse because everybody
else is improving. Andy, like all of us, is faced with that
challenge: finding a way to get better."
He could do worse than to
have a squint at Arthurs's record and approach. At the age of 30
he was presented with the most toxic of poisoned chalices: to play
in the fifth and deciding rubber in Australia's Davis Cup final
with France. Pat Rafter, every Australian's favourite bloke, had
shirked his responsibilities, citing, for official purposes, a sore
arm and shoulder but causing the cynics to question his intestinal
fortitude.
Arthurs, who had been practicing
for doubles duty only, was told to go to bed on Saturday night and
prepare as if he were going to play in the biggest singles match
of his life. Oh, and by the way, sweet dreams, mate.
Unsurprisingly, he lost the
match in four sets against an inspired Nicolas Escude. He had played
his heart out but it was not quite enough. No one knew what to say
to him as he sobbed into his towel at the side of the court. The
whole tie had been a tactical disaster from start to finish and
poor old Arthurs was left to carry the can.
It has taken him six months
to recover – yesterday was only his sixth match win of the
year – but, finally, he cut out the extraneous thoughts and
has put his mind and his confidence in order. "There are still
a couple of days and nights when I think about it, but it's all
in the past," he said. "I'll look back in 20 years and
see the positive. I played the Davis Cup final at home in Melbourne,
Can't beat that."
Roddick needs to do likewise.
It is easy to be fooled by the hype and the hoopla of being America's
next great hope and even easier to be crushed by the weight of expectation.
If Roddick can just go back to doing what he does best, and doing
it with the reckless abandon of last year, he stands a chance of
making the improvements that Agassi talks of. If not, he is in for
a very long year.
Alix
Ramsay has been covering tennis for British national newspapers
for the past 12 years. She was tennis correspondent of The Times
for three years.
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