Andy Roddick gets plenty of criticism. Americans, after all, have been spoiled by the success of Americans. In the 1970s, there was Stan Smith and Arthur Ashe. Then, it was Jimmy Connors, then John McEnroe. Just when Americans were fretting that there was no one to replace these two icons. American tennis reached its zenith
Last year, about this time, Roddick was having the best three weeks he's had since, oh, say, Wimbledon. Despite the usual suspects of Federer, Nadal, Djokovic and Murray playing both Indian Wells and Miami, all of them were upset somewhat early. Roddick manage to slip through the draw and reach the finals of Indian Wells,
If you have to pick one day to visit Indian Wells to watch the men's matches, today is the day. All of the men play today with the culmination of Rafael Nadal playing upstart Somdev Devvarman and Roger Federer playing upstart Ryan Harrison. For those of you who say Ivo Karlovic is all serve, understand
Now there's a name we haven't heard in a while. James Blake was once a top ten player, someone who came back from scoliosis (affecting his spine) where had to wear a back brace for most of a day, then from shingles and the death of his father. His ranking has since dropped, and he
Last year, the US lost in the first round to Serbia at Serbia. Losers of the first round in Davis Cup must qualify to stay in the World group, so later in the year, US had to go down to Colombia to play on clay. Mardy Fish pulled the rare triple, winning both his singles
The match had been nip and tuck the whole way. Raonic had a chance to win the first set, but played a sloppy point, and let Roddick take the first tiebreak. Then, Roddick took an early break in the second set, and it seemed Raonic's spirits was dashed. But, no, he broke back, and eventually
In 2008, Andy Roddick made an unusual decision. He chose not to play the Olympics. Roddick has always been a big supporter of the US Open Series, the group of tournaments played from just after Wimbledon to just before the US Open. As an American, he has a huge fanbase despite having had his peak
Stan Wawrinka reached the top ten a few years ago, but has since dropped in the rankings to about 20 in the world. A little over a year ago, he married a Swiss TV presenter and former fashion model. She gave birth to their daughter. And shortly afterwards, Wawrinka chose to leave his wife (and
As we head into the second week of play, the top seeds continue to win. There's a decent chance that the top 8 seeds may reach the quarterfinals. The first player to finish his match at the bottom half of the draw was Novak Djokovic. He continues to have one of his easier runs to
After being pushed to 5 sets, Roger Federer got to play Xavier Malisse, someone Roger has known since he was a teenager. Roger has generally fared very well against his generation of players, whether it be Andy Roddick or Jurgen Melzer or Lleyton Hewitt or, indeed, Xavier Malisse. Although Malisse was able to break Federer
