It will be more a footnote — though an important footnote — than some great piece of American tennis history, but Andy Roddick, for the first time in nearly 10 years, will fall out of the ATP’s top 20 when the new rankings come out Monday.
Roddick, currently at No. 15, will drop to about No. 22, maybe 21, after his opening-tournament loss to Philipp Kohlschreiber at the Cincinnati 1000 early this week.
At this point in Roddick’s career, he’s probably a lot less interested in his week-to-week ranking than just staying injury free and able to compete.
Still, 10 years is a very long run in the top 20 and his absence from that group for the first time in a decade is significant. He had first cracked the top-20 at No. 18 on Aug. 20, 2001, 10 days shy of his 19th birthday, and had become one of the game’s longer fixtures in that benchmark group.
He’s dropping out because, having reached the semifinals at Cincinnati a year ago, he had 360 points to defend. His first-round loss this year is worth just 10 points, so he’s losing 350. He does, however, have a chance to recoup some ground next week at the new ATP-250 at Winston-Salem, possibly back into the top 20.
Injuries are crushing his ability to regain form and he’s played only 31 matches this season, on his way possibly to the fewest matches he will have played in a single season since his rookie year of 2000.
He has just returned from an abdominal injury, taking the predictable rust into Cincinnati. He hadn’t played since Wimbledon, where he lost in the third round to Feliciano Lopez in straight sets.
Several players have had this long a run in the top 20, and, like others, Roddick’s tenure there is largely due to his consistency over 10 years. In addition, he broke into the top 10 at No. 9 on Nov. 4, 2002, and spent nine weeks at No. 1 in 2003.
The inactivity this year, and to some extent in 2010, has hurt his ranking. He tumbled out of the top 10 on April 4 of this year. This season, he has a won/lost record of 21-11 with a title at Memphis and a runner-up finish at Brisbane to start the year, but went out in the round of 16 at the Australian Open and round of 32 at Wimbledon. He didn’t play the French Open.
Roddick is going to use the Winston-Salem tournament to, hopefully, find his groove before the U.S. Open, where he won his only major, in 2003.