WIMBLEDON, ENGLAND — The Austin, Texas, airport and Centre Court at the All England Club seldom turn up in the same sentence or even paragraph, but the heady recent plight of Andy Roddick has melded them as evocative benchmarks.
Suddenly, it has grown relevant that as eyeballs all over the planet went rapt last July 6 over a Wimbledon men's singles final for which even "mesmerizing" might not suffice, nobody gave a hoot about the tennis afterthought hanging around that airport some 4,915 miles west.
Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer treated everybody to the unforgettable, while Roddick ranked among the forgotten 32 players banished in the second round. Janko Tipsarevic had done the dishonors, and Roddick departed London and spiraled into "a hard, hard couple of weeks" before doing the regular-guy thing and visiting his Other Half's family for the Fourth of July.
"I think we were coming back from North Carolina and landed and they were heading into the fifth set," Roddick said Friday on one of the better days of his 26-year existence. "You know, I didn't want to watch, 'cause it's tough watching, 'cause you wish you were there. Especially the kind of mental state I was in at that point, it hurt to watch. And then, you know, I landed and it was the match that it was. You know, there was no chance of me getting out of that airport before it was finished."
There he stood watching as an elapsed star, a former No. 1 player, a 2003 U.S. Open champion, surpassed by forces such as Nadal, Novak Djokovic and soon enough Andy Murray, still ranked No. 6 if anyone cared.
There he stood Friday on Centre Court holding his hand over his baseball cap in incomprehension of what he'd done, still ranked No. 6 -- and everyone cared.
With his gripping mastery of No. 3 Murray and all the attending British din by 6-4, 4-6, 7-6 (7), 7-6 (5) in a semifinal, following on his five-set wriggle through Lleyton Hewitt in a quarterfinal, Roddick had gone all the way from the Austin airport on one Wimbledon final Sunday to striding out to Centre Court with Federer on the next, even if proving that to get from Austin to Wimbledon, you do have to change planes.
He had gone from wondering earnestly whether the 2006 U.S. Open might have been his last Grand Slam final to tacking on a third Wimbledon final against Federer, the elegant giant who somehow has graced 16 of the last 17 major finals -- the latest by dint of his 7-6 (3), 7-5, 6-3 passage through Tommy Haas earlier Friday that secured his seventh consecutive Wimbledon final and 20th appearance in a Slam final, both records.
