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Andy Roddick after beating Bernard Tomic, in New York, on Friday |
New York: An emotional Andy Roddick postponed his farewell speech and stayed alive in the US Open by routing Bernard Tomic in the second round at Flushing Meadows.
Roddick needed only one hour and 27 minutes to defeat Tomic 6-3, 6-4, 6-0, just one day after the 30-year-old announced he would retire at the end of the tournament. Winding back the clock to play with the power and aggression that made him US Open champion and world No. 1 in 2003, Roddick will play Italy’s Fabio Fognini in round three for a place in the last 16. “I’m going to try and stick around a little longer,” Roddick told the packed crowd in Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Roddick said he became emotional shortly before the match when he saw a tribute to his career being shown on television in the locker room. “I had no idea what was going to happen out there, honestly, even before the match,” Roddick said. “I’ve played a lot of matches and that was a different kind of nerves than I’ve had before.
“That was surprising for me. I felt weird before the match. Twenty minutes before it was kind of getting the best of me. I had to get my stuff together before I walked out there. I played well and I don’t know why.”
Agnieszka Radwanska beat former top-ranked player Jelena Jankovic in straight sets to match her best result. Radwanska won 6-3, 7-5 on Saturday to make the fourth round at Flushing Meadows for the first time since 2008. The Pole was broken four times, but she converted six of seven break-point chances against the 30th-seeded Jankovic.
Jankovic, who ascended to No. 1 in the rankings and was the US Open runner-up in 2008, had 37 unforced errors to 15 for Radwanska.
Radwanska needed one hour, 38 minutes to win the two sets. She reached her first Grand Slam final this year at Wimbledon, losing to Serena Williams. Her next opponent is 20th-seeded Roberta Vinci, who beat No. 13 seed Dominika Cibulkova 6-2, 7-5.
Maria Sharapova continued her imperious march through the draw as she crushed American college player Mallory Burdette 6-1, 6-1 on Friday.
Serena Williams reeled off the last eight games and reached the fourth round with a 6-4, 6-0 victory Saturday over 42nd-ranked Ekaterina Makarova of Russia, who upset the American at the Australian Open in January. The fourth-seeded Serena hit eight aces and won 32 of the 40 points she served.
The match was even at 4-all in the first set, when Serena broke the left-handed Makarova for the first time to seize control in Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Serena’s fourth-round loss to Makarova in Melbourne is the only defeat in 22 Grand Slam matches against lefties for the 14-time major champion. This time, though, Williams built a 31-10 edge in winners and moved a step closer to a fourth title.
On the Indian front, Leander Paes and his Czech partner Radek Stepanek entered the third round of the men’s doubles event after getting the better of Brazilians Joao Souza and Thomaz Bellucci here. The fifth seeded Indo-Czech combo took an hour and 45 minutes to register a 7-5, 7-6 (7-3) victory over their unseeded opponents.
Even as the Brazilian pair failed to convert the lone breakpoint they earned in the first set, Paes and Stepanek converted one of the two breakpoints they managed to seal the set.
However, the Indo-Czech combo, which had won the Australian Open title earlier this year, wasted as many as five of the six breakpoints in the second which went into the tiebreaker. In the tiebreaker though, they held their nerves to walk away with the set as well as the match.
They next play Jesse Levine of US and Australia’s Marinko Matosevic, who had upset Wimbledon champions Jonathan Marray and Frederik Nielsen 6-1, 6-7(6), 6-4.
Sania Mirza and her American doubles partner Bethanie Mattek-Sands defeated Darija Jurak and Katalin Marosi 6-4, 6-2 to cruise into the third round.
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