Andy Roddick has struck the ball very well for much of the past year, but at the age of 27, time is running out on his opportunities to win a second Grand Slam title. He fought hard in a five-set win over Fernando Gonzalez to even reach the Australian Open quarters and looked primed for a run to the semis if he could get past young Croatian Marin Cilic.
But the thousands of miles he's put on his large frame seem to have caught up with him over the past four months. Stung with a nerve injury, the top American went down 7-6 (4), 6-3, 3-6, 2-6, 6-3 to the rising Cilic, certainly not an embarrassing defeat, but a day he'd rather have back.
Roddick believes he first injured the arm during his win over Gonzalez on Sunday when the cool evening air forced him to swing hard in order to try and hit through the court more. By the end of the first set against Cilic, he had called the trainer, saying that the top of his right shoulder hurt and that his ring finger and pinkie were feeling numb. The trainer told him that he wasn't risking further injury and didn't have to retire from the match, so he trudged on, despite the knowledge that he might not be able to put enough juice on the ball to push the 6-foot-6 Cilic off the baseline.
The first set ended with a blinding forehand winner from Cilic. The second set ended with a booming ace by the Croat, who had been unable to buy a first serve. But then Roddick flattened out his groundstrokes more and let it rip from the baseline. Due to his injury, he was having trouble putting enough topspin on his forehand or enough slice and kick on his serve.
“I was having trouble when it was up a little bit, kind of when I had to hit it and pull back,” he said. “But I was playing pretty high risk and the ball was dropping in for a couple of sets.”
Cilic, who had already scored five-set wins over Bernard Tomic and Juan Martin del Potro, looked tapped out in the third and fourth sets and suddenly, it looked like Roddick might out-tough him. But Roddick was unable to convert three break points in the opening game of the fifth set and just like that, the beanpole Cilic became juiced up and finally began to find the range on his serve.
The 21-year-old's highly deceptive two-handed backhand began to find the mark; he went hard at Roddick's forehand and sensed the slowdown in the American's service speed and pounced. He broke Roddick to 3-1 when the American mishit two negotiable forehands and then was untouchable on serve the rest of the way.
“I hit it pretty decent in the fifth. The two forehands, that I missed to get broken were after I hit five or six balls pretty firm before that,” Roddick said. “It ended up working out for me OK from the baseline. I was just having to break too many times.”
Roddick wasn't down in the dumps after the loss and he really doesn't have a reason to be. If Cilic played at a high level, then Roddick was going to have to be at his best to beat him anyway. Taking him out at 80 percent would have been shocking, unless Cilic choked.
“To be able to push it and have a shot I thought it was a pretty good effort,” Roddick said.
Roddick will turn 28 at the end of August, and no one, including himself, thinks he has a chance to win the French Open on clay. Given how few players as of late have been able to win majors past the age of 30, realistically, that gives him another eight chances to win that elusive second major.
He's ranked No. 7, which outside of Wimbledon, is pretty much the level that he's played at over the past year. Not only is he dealing with a nerve injury now, but a knee injury took him out of action for most of the fall. Since last summer, two young players, Cilic and Del Potro, have broken out and made themselves major contenders at the Slams. In 2011, the tour will likely have another big time young player and in 2012, at least another one after that.
For all his hard work and improvement, it looks like that the mountain that Roddick has to climb to back to Grand Slam glory has become all the more treacherous.
