WASHINGTON (RPRN) 8/7/2009–American tennis star Andy Roddick won his opening match at the Legg Mason Tennis Classic in Washington, Wednesday night.
This was Andy Roddick’s first match since his heartbreaking
marathon five-set loss in the Wimbledon final, one month ago, to number-one Roger Federer of Switzerland.The top-seeded Roddick, who has won this Washington tournament three times, looked sharp in beating German Benjamin Becker in straight sets, 6-3, 6-2. Roddick explained how he approached this match, which took only 55 minutes.
“I wanted to get out there and make him play a lot of balls and kind of try to get my feet under me and not overplay out of the gates [in my first match after the layoff]. You know, I didn’t want to come out just firing all out. I kind of wanted to work my way into the match and kind of get some rallies going, and you know, just try to do the basics well,” he said. “And, I feel like I did it all right.”
Roddick had a first round bye, so his win over Becker moves him into the third round against fellow-American Sam Querrey. Querrey was a 6-3, 6-4 winner over Russian Igor Kunitsyn.
Roddick has beaten Querrey the only two times they have played one another. Earlier this year in Memphis, Roddick needed three sets to win.
“We do a lot of the same things. He obviously plays very big. You know, he’s a big guy and he’s in form having, won (the tournament) last week in L.A [Los Angeles]. So it’s certainly not going to be easy for me. He has a full month of matches behind him going in. So it’ll probably come down to a couple [points] here and there, because we should both be able to hold serve a little bit. But it’s certainly going to be a very tough one,” he said.
Among other second-round matches Tuesday, fourth seed Fernando Gonzalez of Chile beat Colombian Alejandro Falla, 7-5, 7-5. Eleventh seed Ivo Karlovic of Croatia won in straight sets over German Rainer Schuettler, 6-4, 7-5. Australian star Lleyton Hewitt needed three sets to get past Israeli Dudi Sela, 6-3, 2-6, 6-2.
In a couple of upsets, Juan Carlos Ferrero knocked off seventh-seeded fellow-Spaniard Tommy Robredo, 6-3, 6-2, and German Philip Petzschner rallied from a first-set loss to oust ninth-seeded American Mardy Fish, 1-6, 6-4, 6-1.
Also, last year’s finalist and 12th seed, Viktor Troicki of Serbia, had to retire with a foot injury, while trailing Frenchman Marc Gicquel in the first set, 3-0.
