Roddick Overcomes Hewitt, Himself

This is the Andy Roddick we should have been watching all these years. It's the guy we saw early in his career, when he was going to be the next great American star, smoothly making the transition from Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi.

Somewhere in there, Roddick's brain stopped developing. Or maybe the sport just kept developing while he was stuck in the power era, when finesse and style and smarts, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, moved in. He was a Neanderthal, while modern man arrived.

Whatever ... Andy Roddick has been promising a new Andy Roddick lately. And on Wednesday, there he was. He beat Lleyton Hewitt 6-3, 6-7 (12-10), 7-6 (7-1), 4-6, 6-4 in the Wimbledon quarterfinals, and now will face No. 3 Andy Murray in the Battle of Andys, on Friday.

"I'm ready to go," Roddick said as he left the court. "No time to be tired."

Twenty-six years old, and has he finally arrived for real? I can't go that far yet. Maybe by Sunday.

I still think Murray is going to win the tournament, but the pressure is on him now, trying to be the first British Wimbledon champ in 73 years. And if Roddick plays Federer in the final, that big serve gives him a puncher's chance.

In fact, though, that puncher's chance is exactly why you can't consider Roddick's change official. He had a personal best 43 aces, and also nearly had one of his classic fifth-set meltdowns. And Hewitt, who depends on foot speed, hurt his leg in the match. But the point is, Roddick would have lost this match at any point the past five years.

Last year, Roddick has hired a new coach, Larry Stefanki. He has changed his diet, lost 15 pounds, added a decent backhand, even developed some brainpower. He also got married, and now is 26. It's so easy to believe you've changed while you're beating up on lesser players in the early rounds. In one match, Roddick started hitting soft as part of a -- yes, you can use this word with him now -- strategy.

But it's when you get to a match like this, though, in the fifth set against a real player, that you find what's real and what's not. Roddick broke Hewitt's serve at 4-4, then held for the win. He should have been doing this for years. He won the U.S. Open in 2003, when he had just turned 21. He moved up to No. 1 in the rankings, but hasn't won a major since. Modern man, Federer, moved in, and beat Roddick in two Wimbledon finals and one U.S. Open.

But others started beating Roddick, too. He has stayed in the top 10, but well, even Sampras, on ESPN this week, listed the great players and didn't mention Roddick. So where did Roddick go?

"I don't really feel like sitting here," he said the other day, "and talking about now versus five years ago."

Well, Roddick is now just 11-12 in matches that reach a fifth set. That fifth set is a special moment in tennis. It's what determines who you are. The pressure has gotten to him, and without any strategy or brain work, he has resorted to the only thing he can: Swinging harder.



Hewitt knows. He wasn't convinced that this new Roddick is real, either, so he took pace off the ball and simply kept it in play. The plan was that Roddick would blow it. And at one point, Roddick got upset for no real reason. He was getting nervous. He was cracking. A line call went in his favor after the instant replay, but Roddick kept arguing anyway.

During a changeover in the fifth set, he sat in his chair and complained to the chair umpire. Just a few weeks earlier, when he lost his nerve against Gael Monfils at the French Open, Roddick did the same thing, arguing that it was too dark to keep playing. He just kept arguing and arguing, even in between points. Eventually, he lost.

So on Wednesday, the chair umpire asked the line judge if he had signaled the ball in originally, as Roddick insisted. The line judge said he had not. "You think the guy lied to you just now?" Roddick snapped back at the chair ump.

And this is where Patrick McEnroe, ESPN analyst and U.S. Davis Cup captain put it best. McEnroe had embarrassed himself during Roddick's meltdown at the French, gushing over Roddick and at one point even calling Monfils bush league just for rallying a supportive crowd.

"It's not worth it for Roddick to get into it," McEnroe said Wednesday. "That's part of the reason he's 10-12 in five-setters. [You can't] let something like that get to you. You don't want to give Lleyton Hewitt that kind of message, that you're rattled."

So that was a big moment for Roddick, for his future. Finish the meltdown, and we might never see him in a big moment, a big match, again. But Roddick closed. It took three hours, 50 minutes, a classic between two former No. 1s, and he did it.

"We used to get into it a little bit when we were younger," Roddick said of his rivalry with Hewitt. "Now we're just a couple of old married dudes. Maybe we've grown up a little bit."

Something has changed in Roddick for sure. Over the next four days, we'll find out how much.

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