Monday, March 10, 2008 Roddick rules Dubai By Jobannie C. Tabada Contributor
DUBAI—Andy Roddick completed an extraordinary championship run—one of his best efforts for many years—with an enthralling victory over unseeded Feliciano Lopez, the overachieving Spanish dynamo who in stretches of brilliance, particularly in the first set, looked headed towards claiming an unprecedented fourth scalping of a world top 10 player here before ultimately losing steam to concede the Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships title duel.
Roddick’s 6-7 (8), 6-4, 6-2 championship triumph in his Dubai debut may not sound much of a surprise to many fans, especially against a 41st-seeded caliber opponent, but in reality the American had to overcome a number of odds just to get through each round.
“I was literally asleep before my first match in the players’ lounge. I was on the floor with people stepping over me and (Novak) Djokovic dropping stuff on me,” said an animated Roddick after his victory, drawing a hearty laugh from members of the press corps.
To get to Dubai, Roddick had to take a 6,000-mile journey from Memphis, where he competed last week, with a stopover in Frankfurt. He arrived jet-lagged and tired and had to skip pre-game warm-ups in his opening match against Juan Carlos Ferrero.
Amazingly, what followed was a phenomenal stretch of tennis brilliance in which Roddick stormed his way to the championship without dropping a single set, and beating the likes of 2005 champion Rafael Nadal, the world No.2, and reigning Australian Open champion Novak Djokovic, the world No.3, in the quarterfinals and semis, respectively.
The championship also somehow proved a point for the revitalized world No.6 as the Dubai event was his first since officially splitting up last week with his coach Jimmy Connors, who has been credited for creating new facets in what was otherwise a one-dimensional game that depended solely on a single weapon – his big serve. The break-up was amicable, Roddick said, although seen largely as a result of Connors’ unwillingness to join him on the road.
Hurdle
But the biggest hurdle that actually stood on the way to his second title of the season was the stocky 6-foot-1 left-hander from Madrid. Like Roddick, Lopez, who had lost all his previous three meetings with the American without ever winning a set, was having the tournament of his life; for the first time in his career he beat three top 10 players in row—No.10 Tomas Berdych in the second round, No.4 David Ferrer in the quarters and No.5 Nikolay Davydenko in the semis – all in one event.
True to form, Lopez matched Roddick’s aces—he had 10 against the American’s nine—and threw in a regular dose of vicious attacks at the net that made for an exciting full hour of tennis – all in the first set alone. He did face three break points, one in the second game and two in the eighth, but he saved them all, highlighting the efforts with lightning aces.
Exciting
Lopez again played big in the equally exciting tiebreak, rifling a forehand pass down the line that ignited a mighty run to turn a 1-4 deficit to a set point at 6-5. Roddick served to regain the upper hand, 7-6, but Lopez won four of the next five points to finally claim the set.
Despite conceding his first set in the whole tournament, Roddick, who never faced a single break point in the event, still had no doubt he was going to win.
“The whole time I thought I was playing well. It’s not like I felt like I was really struggling to hit the ball…I was confident that I’m gonna play the point that I wanted to,” said Roddick. “He was playing too good. But sometimes when I put pressure on people, they crack, and he did in the second set and I played well in the third.”
Lopez, who will leapfrog to 31st when the new world rankings are released, hammered down three successive aces to close out the first game of the second set and then pumped in another three in a row in the seventh to lead, 4-3, sending upset tunes across the standing-only Dubai Tennis Stadium.
But things quickly turned sour in the ninth when Lopez, serving for 5-4, started committing a series of unforced errors. First, a forehand went wide, followed by a scooping forehand volley that hit the net short. The final straw was a costly double fault, allowing Roddick to serve for the set, which he duly accomplished without yielding a point.
“I was feeling a little bit tired and he was able to return my serve much better and he was playing better from the baseline,” said Lopez, adding that his errors at 5-4 in the second set were decisive. “It was tough to win points in the third set and I got broken twice.”
Lopez, who had 24 aces in all against Roddick’s 21, again squandered his serve in the opening game of the third set, and yet again capitulated in the seventh, giving Roddick the opportunity to serve for the championship in the eighth game, which he fittingly secured with a booming service winner.
“As I’ve stated before a big part of my decision to come here was to take a shot at the top players and success here made that look like a good idea,” Roddick said, explaining his decision to skip the Tennis Channel Open in Las Vegas and make that hurried 20-hour trip to Dubai.
Apart from beating the sport’s top guns, Roddick also received a $300,000 winner’s check, a far cry from the $68,000 top prize in Las Vegas.
