By Greg Cote, McClatchy Newspapers –
KEY BISCAYNE, Fla. — The American flag in tennis is at half-mast, as if mourning its own decline and malaise. It might be closer to dragging on the ground than it is to flying high.
Andy Roddick and Serena Williams raised that flag a little bit Saturday on a sun-blessed day down in Key Biscayne.
There was a small feeling of nostalgia down at the Crandon Park Tennis Center in the twin triumphs by the two most prominent names (still) in U.S. men’s and women’s tennis. And in a sport so global, drawn along national lines, maybe there was room for a fan of either player to feel a tug of patriotism, too.
This is a sport that can make you feel old, very old, at an age when most other athletes are just entering their prime.
So it is easy to root for Williams, at 30, as she tries to reclaim her old dominance. Just as it is easy to hope that Roddick, 29, might somehow make his far steeper climb to recover his more distant better days.
Saturday felt like old times again as Roddick dispatched Luxembourg’s Gilles Muller, 6-3, 6-2, just after Williams had overpowered Italy’s Roberta Vinci, 6-2, 6-1, both matches played on the distinctly purple rectangle of center court.
Serena played the day’s first match and joked afterward that she “isn’t a morning person” but saw the benefit. Her day’s work done, “I can go to the beach,” she said. “I love the beach.”
This tournament, the sport’s “fifth major,” is the extended backyard for both American stars, Roddick having grown up near Boca Raton and Williams in Palm Beach Gardens. Roddick recalled attending his first tournament here as a star-struck 10-year-old. Serena first played this event as a teenager in 1998.
Now both are veterans linked by a desire that sounds so simple but is not: to be what they once were. And American tennis needs them both, still. Rather desperately, as a matter of fact.
Williams remains a major player on the WTA Tour when healthy, and only health issues have caused her tumble from the top of the world rankings to a current No. 11. She has won 14 majors, fifth all-time among women, and you get the sense she isn’t done yet. It is remarkable that, 14 years after we first saw her, Serena remains the biggest thing in the American women’s game.
That is remarkable-good. But also remarkable-sad.
There is nobody else. The closest, still, is her older sister Venus.
Maybe Christina McHale (ranked No. 32) will be the next great American female in the sport. Or maybe it will be 19-year-old Sloane Stephens, a part-time Broward resident who fell Saturday to Maria Sharapova. But there has been a parade of American babies and maybes who would overtake the Williams sisters, and we are still waiting.
Same on the men’s side.
It’s remarkable-good but also sad that, 9 years past his career peak, Roddick remains the biggest star in U.S. men’s tennis. He won his lone major in the 2003 U.S. Open, and who’d have believed that still is the most recent major won by any American man?
We keep waiting for what’s next. Waiting for a Next Big Thing.
While Roddick has slipped to 34th in the rankings — his lowest perch since 2001 — two other U.S. men, Mardy Fish and John Isner, have climbed to eighth and 10th, respectively. But Fish will be the guy known mostly for the odd surname until he breaks through and wins a major. Likewise Isner will be the guy known mostly for his height — 6-9 — until he too proves he can beat the elite in a major.
Who’s next? Maybe it will be 19-year-old Ryan Harrison, who is ranked 73rd but pushed the great Roger Federer to a tiebreaker in a 6-2, 7-6 (7-3) loss Saturday.
Meantime, Roddick is not ready to put his own faded career in the past tense just yet. He’ll get his next major gauge right away, with Federer his next foe here.
“He’s pretty good,” deadpanned Roddick on Saturday. “There’s a small window (against him), and what he does is, he shrinks that window.”
Federer is the nemesis who has most prevented Roddick from reprising his one major.
“No getting around he’s been the biggest obstacle in my career,” Roddick said.
Federer, Rafael Nadal and now Novak Djokovic make up the top tier Roddick must find a way to reach. He has tried everything to make up the ground. He has changed coaches, tried adding a net game, worked on his footwork — everything. Roddick has that American ethic that hard work overcomes anything. Except it doesn’t always.
Now he tries to recover his halcyon days while also beginning to hear his internal career clock, and wonder if it is getting louder.
Only three weeks ago the at-times moody Roddick got so frustrated with himself during a tournament that he smashed two rackets.
It’s weird. As Roddick said the other day, if a movie actor wins an Oscar early in his career he is celebrated for that “for the next 40 years.” But if a tennis player wins a U.S. Open early in his career and it’s been almost 10 years since with no such high, well, he is Andy Roddick, trying to not be a has-been at 29.
“I feel like something good is coming,” he said Saturday. “I think I can get back to where I think I should be.”
Serena Williams is convinced of the same.
And after all this time, American tennis still very much needs them both.
