Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
WIMBLEDON, England - Andy Roddick, your sport is calling.
This is your time. This is your place. In another week, the rest of the world should be debating whether this is your sport.
Wimbledon is ripe for the taking.
Won't you pluck it?
If ever a sport needed a player to arrive, it is tennis. If ever a tournament needed rescuing, it is Wimbledon. Man, could both of them use a dose of Roddick.
Check your watch, kiddo.
It's time to arrive.
Enough with the discussions of Roddick's potential and his progress and his possibilities. That's been talked about for years. Enough with the time spent waiting, enough with the dues paid, enough with patience and perspective. It is time for Roddick to grow up. Now.
Tennis needs him.
Wimbledon needs him.
And, after Andre Agassi's defeat, America needs him.
Look around, and the men's quarterfinals at Wimbledon look like something from the Boise Open. The tournament has become a convention of those you've forgotten and those you've never heard of. There isn't much left that will make this event memorable.
Jonas Bjorkman? Alexander Popp? Sjeng Schalken? Sebastien Grosjean? Juan Carlos Ferrero? Mark Philippoussis? Oh, yes. And Tim Henman, who still is trying to determine the proper heights to reach before falling off the hill.
Gee. How many of those autographs do you have?
Now, explain it to me one more time. Carefully, because I'm kind of slow.
Why, exactly, can't Roddick win this thing?
The easy answer, of course, is because Roddick has never won anything. All of his yesterdays have been spent as tomorrow's champion, as the anointed one that was going to be good, well, later.
With every match he plays, however, Roddick appears tougher, hungrier, smarter. He has lost one set in four matches, and more and more, it does not look like a young player putting together a nice little string. It looks like a threat.
When does a boy become a man? When does tomorrow turn into today? When does a player find the proper foothold to grow into something special?
It happens. There was a time people wondered when Pete Sampras would arrive, too, before he made a similar run to win his first Wimbledon at age 21. Jimmy Connors won his first at the same age, and Boris Becker already had won three. Bjorn Borg was 20; John McEnroe was 22. The great ones always win Wimbledon before you think they're ready.
For Roddick, two months shy of his 21st birthday, now looks like a good time.
Why should he wait? Who knows how many chances Roddick will get? Roddick is one of those players who puts everything he has into his serve, and there is a school of thought that it will catch up to him.
"If he swings like that and makes it to 32, I'll take my hat off to him," Todd Martin said the other day.
Roddick's response is about what you would expect from a 20-year-old who is used to leaving dents in a ball. No, he said, he isn't worried about injuries. No, he isn't worried about the future.
These days, Roddick doesn't seem worried about anything. He just keeps playing the points. Finally, he seems mature enough, resilient enough, consistent enough.
Consider his recent victory, when he dispatched Paradorn Srichaphan. One minute Roddick was sailing along, and the next he was struggling. He lost the second set, and early in the third, he faced four break points.
It was precisely the kind of match Roddick would have lost in the past. His mind would have thought about every possible pitfall, and he would have pressed, and he would have panicked.
This time? He gathered himself. He won.
There seems to be a mental toughness that was missing from Roddick earlier. There seems to be a faith that when his serve leaves him for a while, or when his groundstrokes seem wobbly, that he will find a way to right himself.
Credit much of that to Brad Gilbert, Roddick's new coach. He's taken the pressure off Roddick's shoulders. Also, he's taken the goofy-looking visor off his head.
No small thing, that. Gilbert looked at Roddick, at the hair sticking up like plumage, and shook his head. You don't scare people in a visor, Gilbert said. (You can look it up. Neither Steve Spurrier nor Phil Mickelson ever won a Wimbledon).
So far, it's working. Roddick hasn't wilted in the face of Srichaphan's calm or Greg Rusedski's fury.
Now, who is standing in his way?
Bjorkman? The self-proclaimed "old Swedish Viking?" Yes, he could beat Roddick. He beat him last year on grass at Nottingham. On the other hand, Rusedski beat him badly last year.
Roger Federer? Nice player, bad back. Besides the problem with typing "Federer" is this. It's difficult to know when you are done. The temptation is to keep adding E's and R's until the end of the paragraph.
Popp? In the interview room, I swear, I was waiting for someone to ask: "Pardon us, but exactly who are you?"
Philippoussis? He had unbearable heat against Agassi, leaving the American looking old and overmatched and fending off questions about his retirement. But can Philippoussis play three more matches like that?
And so it goes. In years past, competitors had to bow. Now, they have to introduce themselves.
For those who run Wimbledon, there are two ways out of this mess. One is for Henman, the Englishman, to break through and win Wimbledon, which would make it tough on the grass courts, what with Hades freezing over and all.
The other is Roddick. If he were to win, it could be remembered as the start of something special.
The kid can win this thing.
If you don't want to remember it as a day in Grosjean's back yard, he'd better.