REPORTING FROM THE LONDON OLYMPICS
WIMBLEDON (Aug. 1) — It’s getting hard to watch Andy Roddick play tennis. You can’t figure out what his spot is anymore. What his role is. Is he the great American tennis star? No. Well, sort of, maybe.
He isn’t going to win another major or get anywhere near the mountaintop again, but he’s still the only men’s player to be a star in U.S. pop culture, married to Brooklyn Decker, swimsuit model. Can he win a big match? Maybe one. He’s not coming, he’s not going. He hasn’t stayed too long, but it’s hard to know what he’s staying for. Maybe he just likes it.
But he’s sort of just suspended there, killing time. And it could go on, uncomfortably, for a while.
“I feel like it’s extremes with me right now,’’ he said after getting crushed Tuesday by Novak Djokovic in the Olympics at Wimbledon. It was 6-2, 6-1 in 54 minutes. “If I win one, it’s like Career Appreciation Day. Then if I lose one, it’s like we should take him out in the field and shoot him in the head.’’
Roddick is going to be a great TV analyst. That’s where he can mean the most to U.S. tennis now, if he brings his sharpness and his brutal honesty with him. You might not know it, but privately he is thoughtful about all sorts of issues. His sarcasm and meltdowns can become selling points for TV, too.
Please read the rest of my column at FoxSports.com