Miami Masters: Roddick Did the Unthinkable!

Andy Roddick produced a fantastic performance to beat the world number one, Roger Federer, for the first time in more than four years and for the second time in the history of their rivalry.

It was just one of those days when everything worked out excellently for Roddick. However, even those days do not usually bring victories against Roger unless something special happens.

And it did! Andy had actually figured how to handle Federer’s passing shots and his backhand slices that bothered him so much before.

The key to evading that cruel passes was very simple: just stay at the baseline. We have seen Roddick being passed and just looking at the ball with his bowed head so many times that it has become the trade-mark picture of the matches between the two.

This time, though, it was curious to see how many times he was tempted to attack but managed to somehow restrain himself and be patient and wait for Roger’s errors.

And they came… eventually. Although Federer did not play his best game, he did not play bad at all. He still finished the match with 17 winners more than unforced errors, which is saying a lot about the quality of the game. However, he made several mistakes during the big points, in the first-set tiebreaker and, more importantly, in the eighth game of the decisive set when he got broken tat love after three unforced errors on his part and a fabulous passing forehand by Roddick.

The main thing in the game, though, was Andy’s serve. “Oh, really?,” someone might say. “I didn’t know that!”  But he actually changed it this time.

Although it was still the 140 mile-per-hour serve, it was not directed at Federer’s backhand, as usual, but at his forehand. Instead of seeing his serves just being chipped by Federer's fantastic slice, Roddick tried a new method this time.

The results were immediate. Federer did not know what to do with the ball at his forehand. He has now built such a reputation for his destructive forehand that people usually test his backhand in the hope that he might err from time to time. But he did not know how to return those fast serves with his forehand. The ball kept falling loose or out.

Of course, Roddick’s first serve was so useful because it got in a lot of the time thus earning him many cheap points, including 18 aces, two of them in the final game.

After taking a 40-0 and 5-3 lead in the final set, he uttered something to the heavens that looked like “just one more.”

And for good reason. Roger did not feel like giving up just yet. Two phenomenal passing shots saw him just one point from leveling the game. However, he could do nothing against that formidable serve down the line.

I think Andy actually shed a tear after the final point. His second win in seventeen matches. Well, there was one more win in a warm-up tournament before the Australian Open, but that doesn’t really count.

He probably thought about all the titles he could have won if it hadn’t been for that Swiss. Two finals at Wimbledon and a semifinal, a final at US Open and one more quarterfinal, a semifinal at Australian Open (he doesn’t want to remember that one), a final at Toronto Masters, a couple of semifinals at the Final Masters and many more.

But that does not matter right now. All that matters is that he proved he is not just a remnant of old-school tennis, in which it all came down to a fast serve, a good forehand and a reliable backhand slice. He showed he can actually change tactics whenever he has to. Well, it took him 17 matches to figure out what that should be against Roger but he did figure it out in the end. And he is one of the very few to do that.

Andy will now play Davydenko in the semifinals but he wouldn’t be bothered too much if he were to lose that game. After all, he defended his points from last year’s Miami Masters by defeating his greatest rival! What else can he ask for?

Well, he could, of course, try to win the last hard-court tournament before the long torture, namely clay, but he wouldn’t be too disappointed if he does not do that.

This year will be remembered! And it might actually bring an end to what has been a totally one-man dominated period.