WIMBLEDON, England (AP) – A 135 mph serve makes tiebreakers a little easier, and Andy Roddick won some important points with that one stroke Saturday at Wimbledon.
Taking advantage of his big serve, Roddick won two tiebreakers and beat good friend Jurgen Melzer 7-6 (2), 7-6 (2), 4-6, 6-3 to reach the third round.
Roddick improved to 22-3 this year in tiebreakers.
“Obviously, being able to win cheap points under tense situations with my serve helps,” he said.
In the tiebreakers, Roddick won eight of his nine service points. He won more than 70 percent of his service points in the match and finished with 33 aces.
Serving like that on grass, a surface that magnifies the advantage for big hitters, could make Roddick be a factor in final weekend. He was runner-up to Roger Federer at Wimbledon in 2004 and 2005.
How does his play in those years compare with this week?
“I think the best I’ve played here was probably ’04,” Roddick said. “But as far as comparing to ’05, it’s probably similar.”
His three matches have followed a similar pattern – each time he has won the first two sets, dropped the third and won the fourth.
“I feel like I can play better,” Roddick said. “Every time I go out there, it’s about just surviving. You know, no such thing as a bad win, so that’s just the way you look at it.”
Seeded sixth, Roddick is into Week 2 for the fifth time in nine years at Wimbledon. His opponent Monday will be No. 20 Tomas Berdych, who advanced by beating No. 12 Nikolay Davydenko 6-2, 6-3, 6-2.
Berdych has yet to drop a set through three matches, and he’s 2-2 against Roddick, winning the last time they played – at Tokyo in October.
“Berdych is streaky,” Roddick said. “It’s rarely middle-of-the-road. He’s either really good or not so good. Right now you expect to get the best of him, with the way he has been rolling through the tournament so far.”
Roddick expects to be prepared. This is his first Wimbledon with coach Larry Stefanki, who can draw from many years on tour when he prepares scouting reports.
“He’s very studied on the players,” Roddick said. “He knows a lot about a lot of guys. He has, like, almost like a steel trap memory from certain points when guys have played his guys in the past, tendencies, this, that and the other. He’s very thorough. Has good instincts as far as reading guys.”
LEVINE’S RUN ENDS: At No. 133, Jesse Levine of Boca Raton, Fla., was the lowest-ranked man left at Wimbledon. The last male qualifier still playing, too.
So the 21-year-old Levine was quite pleased with his showing at the All England Club, even if he lost his third-round match to No. 19 Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland 5-7, 7-5, 6-3, 6-3 Saturday.
“Obviously, it would have been nice to get through and keep it going a little bit, but I’m happy, and I’m ready to go home and see the family. It’s been a while,” Levine said.
He arrived at Wimbledon with an 0-2 record in tour-level matches in 2009. But he won three times in qualifying, then beat former No. 1 Marat Safin, followed by Pablo Cuevas to reach the third round at a major championship for the first time.
“The first-round match with Safin was definitely the biggest win of my career,” Levine said. “And then going on and winning my second round and getting to the third round of a Slam, yeah, I would definitely say this is one of the biggest results of my career so far.”
He now hopes to lift his ranking high enough to be able to gain direct entry into the main draw at the U.S. Open.
Future goals aside, Levine won’t soon forget his first victories – or longest stay so far – at Wimbledon.
“Walking in, you see everything, and it’s kind of overwhelming because you see it on TV,” he said. “But now I’m kind of in the swing of things. My coach, it was actually his first time here, so it was pretty cool to show it to him, and he was in awe of everything. It’s just so prestigious here.”
BAD BIRTHDAY: Someone forgot to tell Sabine Lisicki that Saturday was Svetlana Kuznetsova’s 24th birthday.
The 41st-ranked Lisicki beat Kuznetsova 6-2, 7-5 in one of the biggest upsets of the tournament – not exactly the kind of birthday present the French Open champion wanted.
“Well, it’s definitely still a great day,” the fifth-seeded Kuznetsova said.
It wasn’t a great day on the court, as Kuznetsova became the highest-seeded woman eliminated in the first week.
“I felt like I was standing, I was not moving anything,” the Russian said. “You’ve got to be quick and at maximum level all the time, and I haven’t done so today. That’s why I lost. … You know, some days it’s not going your way, and I was just standing there and not doing much.”
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