four games

By Charles Bricker

Four games into the second set of what looked like another Rafael Nadal steamroller, Andy Roddick suddenly shot toward the net behind one of those massive serves and, just for an instant, I felt like screaming, “At last! Serve and volley. What took you so long!”

Roddick got the point and most of the others that followed and, while you couldn’t say with 100 percent certainty that this was the turning point in this beautifully played semifinal at the Sony Ericsson Open, I’d be willing to bet a fiver that it was.

Only briefly and only in isolated moments afterward did Nadal look anything like the formidable killer who had powered through Roddick in the opening stages of this 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 victory. It was a triumph that sent Roddick and his prodigious serve into his fourth championship match of the season.

It’s one of the wonders of tennis the way these matches sometimes turn around on a simple change in tactics. This one certainly did. Roddick had been much too passive in the opening set, putting too much air under his ground strokes, hoping to force Nadal to generate all the pace and depending on his near-flawless serve to get him into a tiebreak, at the very least.

If that was coach Larry Stefanki’s game plan, it might have been worth a try, but it didn’t work well as Nadal broke early and just fed off Roddick’s too-safe ground strokes.

Fine. Let’s go to Plan B. And everything turned around midway through the second set as Roddick, probably on some pre-arranged decision with Stefanki, made two strategic decisions, both producing the desired effects.

First, serve and volley tennis. This wasn’t about holding serve. Roddick probably could have maintained his serving edge without coming in behind it. It was about getting Nadal out of a comfort zone or, at least, making him think about something else. That’s not exactly new-age thinking, nor is it necessarily effective against a player as great as Nadal. But if you’re getting your tail whipped, you’ve got to change the ambiance. Roddick converted only 15 of 25 points at net, which isn’t exactly Sampras-like. But his presence up there heavily discomfited Nadal, and that’s what this was about.

Second, Roddick flattened out his ground strokes and went hard after Nadal’s forehand, hoping to eliminate some of the Spaniard’s heavy topspin, and it produced enough shorter returns to allow Andy to seize some control. And with the control came confidence. And with the confidence came the breaks he needed.

One of the most important points in this match came with Roddick serving at 3-3 in the second set when he won a 14-stroke rally. Big deal, you say? Against Nadal on this particularl afternoon, it was very big, and it was a whopper of a confidence reinforcement for Andy.

The second-set break came at 3-4 and love-40. After yet another short Nadal ball, Roddick lashed a forehand to the forehand corner for a clean winner, then closed out the set by winning the last 11 points.

Nadal was in full retreat now and, in the third game of the final set, he had two chances to put away a key point on serve and failed on both an overhead and volley. He then gave the break away on an easy forehand into the net.

It was an amazing turn-around and, the way Roddick was serving, this semi was over and out right there. It’s well known that Roddick has one of the two or three best serves in tennis, but he’s been at an even higher level the last few weeks. When Nadal broke in the first set, it was only the second time that Roddick has been busted in 64 service games dating back to his loss to Ivan Ljubicic in the Indian Wells final.

Before we leave this match, there were two significant changeover moments this afternoon.

* After the opening game of the second set, Roddick lit into chair umpire Fergus Murphy, who has had his share of controversial moments over the years. Roddick thought he had won Game 1 with an ace. Nadal, who was walking toward his chair, knew it was an ace. So did the linesperson. But Murphy overruled, forcing Roddick to challenge.

“You’re overruling on a ball in the far court,” Roddick pointed out as he approached his chair. “You’re right and I was wrong,” Murphy acknowledged. And Roddick snapped back: “Yeah, well we already know that. Far court. You know better than that.”

* Then, on the changeover in the third set at 3-2, Nadal, grimacing and clearly unhappy, pounded his right thigh with his fist. I’d never seen that kind of emotion from him before. Was he hurt? Was he angry that his knee had flared up again? He never called the trainer and I guess we’ll have to wait to hear more about that. It could have just been his inability to make the right adjustments in this match to Roddick’s adjustments.

Whatever the reason, he’s off for the clay season and Roddick is into Sunday’s final and a chance to win his second tournament of the year (Brisbane) and his second Sony Ericsson Open.

He’s not just a slugger anymore. Stefanki has given him all the mental tools he gave, at various times in his coaching career, John McEnroe, Yevgeny Kafelnikov, Marcelo Rios and Tim Henman. He’s given Roddick the ability to think through the right changes in mid-match and how to combine brute power with clear thinking.

Charles Bricker can be reached at nflwriterr@aol.com