Many Americans look back at the 1990's with nostalgia.
Our economy was booming. We weren’t at war. Our president was still a deeply flawed man, but his flaws were the source of great comedy.
One wonders if Andy Roddick feels the same way about the past decade, and ever ponders what kind of career he’d have enjoyed had he been a player of that era.
True, there probably would’ve been past greats who’d have outshined him, much as the present greats have. Except, unlike today, those greats would also be Americans, thus relieving the burden of a nation’s expectations from Roddick’s shoulders.
Consider this: as there are four slams in a year, there are therefore 40 in a decade. In the 1990's, Pete Sampras won 12 major titles, Andre Agassi five and Jim Courier four. This means that 21 of the majors that took place in that decade—or slightly more than half—were won by Americans.
With only three-quarters of a year’s majors left for this decade, only six have been won by Americans, and five of them were won by Sampras and Agassi. Roddick, in 2003, added the sixth, and has spent the last five and a half years vainly trying to add to that total.
A much more global game has brought innumerable benefits for tennis fans, but America has not kept up with the evolution in the game. For while Roddick, America’s top player for most of the decade, has the head and heart of a champion, his game is distinctly out of step with the times.
Only a decade ago the game was full of player’s who weren’t great athletes but had enormous serves. These players—Greg Rusedski, Richard Krajicek, Mark Philippoussis, and Goran Ivanisevic being most prominent—were able to carve a very good living for themselves and even snag a couple a major titles thanks to a racket technology that had not boomed like it has today and an abundance of fast surfaces to play on.
One can only wonder what Roddick, who serves even harder than they did and has shown a far greater commitment to fulfilling his potential, might have accomplished in that era.
The slower surfaces of today, especially at Wimbledon, along with better rackets have aided returners and ralliers, thus making today’s game more watchable, but have exposed the flaws in Roddick’s game. For, while the American’s game can be described in many superlative adjectives such as “big” and “potent,” one rarely used for it is “complete.”
His movement is, for a pro, average.
Examine the current top eight players—Roddick is, as of this writing, No. 6—and ask yourself if there is a weaker shot in that group than the American’s backhand. I stop short of calling it a weakness, as this word implies that he shanks it regularly or that it consistently sits up in the middle of the court for opponents to crush. It does none of those things; it is simply the least consistently useful groundstroke among the top 10 players, and today’s game relies on groundstrokes more than ever.
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