[情報] Long Live THE KING
Long Live THE KING
Andy Roddick, the Crown prince of the American game, finally assumed the throne
with a commanding victory in the U.S. Open final
by L. Jon Wertheim
Sports Illustrated
IT WAS a few minutes before six o’clock last Saturday evening, and the U.S.
open was on the verge of being officially transformed from a Grand Slam to
Grand Guignol. Earlier in the week persistent rain bad all but washed out three
sessions, constipating the scheduling and igniting calls for a retractable roof
over Arthur Ashe Stadium. But an even darker cloud hovered over the National
Tennis Center in Flushing Meadow. Looking all of his 33 years, Andre Agassi had
been soundly beaten by Spain’s Juan Carlos Ferrero in the first men’s
semifinal match. Now the young American, Andy Roddick, was down match point in
a third-set tiebreaker to Argentina’s David Nalbandian. “Save CBS, Andy!: a
fan yelled, aware that the audience for a Ferrero-Nalbandain final would rival
the audience for Gigli. But the fan might as well have bellowed, “Save
American tennis, Andy!”
The kid stayed in the picture. Roddick spanked a 138-mph service winner to
remain alive. He ended up wining the tiebreaker. As so often happens, there was
an about-face in momentum, and within an hour Roddick has closed out the match.
He had labored for nearly four hours, his feet were caked in gnarly (his word)
blisters, and he had to return for the final the next afternoon. But by then it
was clear that the fates had already written the script.
The 2003 Open won’t be remembered for the rain, the dubious scheduling or the
retirement of the best male player of the Open era. No, this was destined to be
Roddick’s personal debutants’ ball. Roddick was barely old enough to see over
the net when his name began riding tandem with the phrase great American tennis
hope. Even though he had gone on to win 100 professional matches faster than
either Pete Sampras or Agassi had, the weight of expectations hung on him
uncomfortably. Now the weight is gone. On Sunday, Roddick pasted Ferrero 6-3,
7-6, 6-3, justifying all the years of hype. “Did I win this thing?” asked
Roddick, still in disbelief two hours later as he returned to the court and
sat in a ling judge’s chair. “If so, I’d say it was a good tournament for
me.”
So, too, for men’s tennis. The relentless parity that has racked the ATP in
recent years was mercifully absent in New York. The eight highest seeds all
reached the round of 16, and the distinction between pretenders and contenders
was readily apparent. In the latter camp a half-dozen players-each in his early
20s, each with a distinct persona-have risen to the fore. Roddick, Ferrero and
Nalbandian join Switzerland’s Roger Federer, Argentina’s Guillermo Coria and
the contrarian Australian, Lleyton Hewitt, as players who should be firmly
embedded in the top 10 for years. “It’s shaping up to be a really food group
, huh?” says Roddick, who’s now ranked No. 2. “We’re all pretty close.”
Roddick, though, might be the best of the bunch. This summer on the hard courts
, the most democratic of surfaces, he ran roughshod over the competition,
winning four events and 27 of 28 matches. His lock and load serve is a
cornerstone of his game. At the Open he fired a tournament high 123 aces and
routinely struck serves that violated New York City’s antismoking law. And
the rest of his game has caught up to his delivery. His backhand is no longer
a liability. His volley no longer resembles a Tomahawk Chop. He no longer plays
with the subtlety of a blacksmith. Against players with divergent games Roddick
called upon an ever-expanding vocabulary of skills. “That was the ultimate,
beating seven guys in seven ways,” says his coach, Brad Gilbert. “He was able
to make all the adjustments.”
For Roddick and many other players the Open, the most vexing adversary may have
been the second-week drizzle-Weather of Mass Disruption, as it were. That the
rains were hardly Biblical made the delays all the more maddening. Across the
tracks at Shea Stadium the Mets were able to get in three nine-inning games,
but the slightest droplets rendered the hard courts unplayable, and even with
the skies cleared, a dense fog glazed the courts. “Finally it stopped raining,
and you’re so ready to roll,” says Roddick. “Then you couldn’t play because
of the mist? Arrrgghh.”
From mist opportunities to missed opportunities: When Venus and Serena Williams
-winners of every U.S. Open since 1999 and finalists in the five of previous
six majors-withdrew because of an abdominal strain and left-knee surgery,
respectively, the women’s draw opened up dramatically. None other the Jennifer
Capriati proclaimed that winning a Williamsless tournament might come with an
asterisk. Still, the sisters’ absence was a terrific chance for another player
to seize the occasion, to say nothing of the $1 million winner’s check.
A prime candidate was Capriati herself, who, at age 27, came into the event
playing her best tennis in recent memory. In the semifinals J-Cap and
Belgium’s Justine Henin-Hardenne engaged in tennis’s answer to a roadhouse
brawl. As both players slugged away Capriati took a 6-4, 5-3 lead. On the brink
of reaching the final she wilted, and Henin-Hardenne, smelling blood, found the
radar on her explosive strokes. In the third set Capriati led even more
commanding, 5-2, but again she took her foot off the opponent’s throat.
Finally, Henin-Hardenne prevailed 4-6, 7-5, 7-6 in a 183-minute psychodrama-the
match of the tournament, if not the year. As she left the court, she doubled
over in pain and was so spent that couldn’t carry her rackets. She walked
gingerly to the locker room, where Capriati was curled on a bench sobbing, her
best, last chance to win another major having slipped through her callused
fingers. After taking an IV, Henin-Hardenne didn’t return to her Manhattan
hotel until 3 a.m. Saturday and declared herself “questionable” for the
women’s final that night against her countrywoman Kim Clijsters.
The table was set for Clijsters to win her first Grand Slam event and
legitimize the top ranking she inherited from Serena Williams last month. But
she too let the moment slip away. Clijsters is the most gracious player in
tennis, but that works against her in high-pressure matches. Her rivalry with
Henin-Hardenne -the so-called Battle of the Belgians – is redolent of Williams
-Williams encounters: awkward affairs in which the more sensitive player
(Clijsters) is trounced by the more Machiavellian one. Henin-Hardenne showed up
on Saturday looking no worse for wear from her grueling semifinal and, in a
virtual reply of the French Open final three months ago, took full advantage of
Clijsters’s nerves to run away with the match 7-5, 6-1.
Though her strokes are fluid, even rococo, Henin-Hardenne’s personality is
gritty. In New York she simply outfought the field to grab her second major of
the year. Not only was her title free of an asterisk, but one wonders how Venus
and Serena felt as they watched. That the 5’6”, 126-pound Henin-Hardenne can
match the sisters’ firepower is one thing; that she is utterly fearless is
something altogether different. “Look, if I want to win, I have to be
[ruthless],” Henin-Hardenne says. “I try to be very businesslike and serious
on the court, but that’s also who I am as a person.”
On the surface Roddick’s constitution is the polar opposite. He is the
quintessential dude who shops at Abercrombie & Fitch, watches Jackass, uses
phrases like mega-amped and wickedly far-fetched, kept a copy of Maxim in his
U.S. Open locker and was stoked to receive a good-luck call from Elton John
before the final. He has an insouciance and a generosity of spirit that are
rare in tennis. What other player, midway thought the fifth set of a Grand Slam
semifinal, would have the stage presence to catch an errant ball in his hat, as
Roddick did? Before taking questions at Sunday’s postmatch press conference,
Roddick grabbed the mike and said gleefully, “No more “What’s it feel like
to be the future of American tennis?” crap!” In short, he is very much in
touch with his inner class clown.
But underneath the impishness and the crowd-pleasing histrionics is a deep
reserve of maturity and polish. When Croatia’s Ivan Ljubicic last to Roddick
in the second round and then made the shabby (and absurd) allegation that
Roddick is universally disliked on tour, the American didn’t fire back
publicly but instead called Ljubicic in his hotel room so they could iron out
their differences. (They did.) When Nalbandian grumpily blamed his semifinal
loss on an injury, Roddick responded coyly, “I thought he did a hell of a job
playing with it.” While Ferrero, the reigning French Open champion, was jangle
-nerved in the final, Roddick was enveloped in calm.
Some of Roddick’s evolution in natural. “The more you play, the more you
learn,” he says with a shrug. “You don’t have all the answers when you come
out here at 18.” Still, it’s no coincidence that Roddick has elevated he
tennis since retaining Gilbert earlier this summer. More guru the coach,
Gilbert hasn’t retooled Roddick’s game or changed his off-court training.
But as he did with his former charge, Agassi, Gilbert has made tennis
blissfully simple for Roddick. His sage advice before the final? “Win three
sets before the other guy does.”
Whatever, it worked. The sun was sinking beneath the horizon when Roddick held
match point and calmly smote his 23rd ace of the day. Within seconds, he knelt
inside the service box –one of the four her had been scorching throughout the
tournament –and leaked tears. On Roddick’s ninth birthday his present was a
trip to the U.S. Open. (“He would wear tennis clothes every day he came here,”
recalls his mother, Blanche. “He got into the players’ lounge with no
credentials.”) Barely a week after his 21st birthday he won the whole
tournament.
It was all so fitting. On the first night of the Open, Pete Sampras formally
retired from tennis. On the last night the newest U.S. star officially arrived.
As flashbulbs blitzed around him, Roddick clung to the trophy that might as
well have been a torch. Finally he had accomplished what the sun seldom managed
to do during this waterlogged tournament. He had broken though.
總算是一篇好評
有些地方寫的好感動喔(可是我不太會上色=.=a 所以不會弄出來 自己找吧XD)
美國媒體果然很照顧我家Andy啊.....XD
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