Andy Roddick advances to Wimbledon semifinals

The American outlasts Australian Lleyton Hewitt in five dramatic sets and will face Scot Andy Murray, who will have the crowd solidly on his side, on Friday.

By Chuck Culpepper


Reporting from Wimbledon, England -- Bound suddenly for his first Wimbledon semifinal since 2005, Andy Roddick bent over in exhaustion and relief with his racquet at his feet after Lleyton Hewitt's last volley sailed past him and long. He rose to share a warm handshake with Hewitt, did a curtain call and exhaled considerably.

He had endured.


Nobody could tell if he would through almost all of his 6-3, 6-7 (10), 7-6 (1), 4-6, 6-4 win at a rowdy Court No. 1 in a Wimbledon quarterfinal Roddick said "certainly wasn't short on drama" and Larry Stefanki, Roddick's coach, called "a dogfight, teeter-totter thing, and who knew which was it was going to go?"

When Roddick broke Hewitt's serve through a four-deuce game at 4-4, then held his own from 30-30 while serving at 5-4, it had gone in the direction of a very loud semifinal booked for Friday. That will feature Roddick, the No. 6-ranked American, against Scotland's Andy Murray, the No. 3-ranked player who reached his first Wimbledon semifinal by tearing through Juan Carlos Ferrero, 7-5, 6-3, 6-2.

"I'm just going to pretend, when they say, 'Come on Andy,' they mean me," Roddick said.

As Murray bids to become the first male British Wimbledon finalist since 1938 and its first champion since 1936, his support on Centre Court will boom, but so will the serves of an opponent who reached the Wimbledon finals in 2004 and 2005, losing both times to Roger Federer, who just qualified for his record 21st straight Grand Slam semifinal with a masterful 6-3, 7-5, 7-6 (3) win over Ivo Karlovic.

Almost certainly before Roddick and Murray get going on Friday, Federer will oppose the 31-year-old Tommy Haas -- who beat No. 4 Novak Djokovic on grass for the second time this summer, 7-5, 7-6 (6), 4-6, 6-3, and found his fourth Grand Slam semifinal but first in the Northern Hemisphere -- yet, oddly, for a five-time champion such as Federer, all the pre-Friday noise will steer elsewhere.

It will go toward Murray as it has all fortnight, but it will go also to the 26-year-old veteran Roddick: the serve Stefanki calls the best in the game, the tete-a-tete against one of the game's best returners, and Roddick's very presence, a berth which brought him relief.

Since losing to Federer in three sets in the 2005 final, he had agonized through bleak and dour Wimbledons. Seeded No. 3 in 2006, he found Murray in the third round, took a 7-6 (4), 6-4, 6-4 defeat and bemoaned the slowing of the All England Club grass courts. Seeded No. 3 in 2007, he reached the quarterfinals and led by two sets, but saw Richard Gasquet of France hit a stunning 93 winners and appeared crushed. Seeded No. 6 in 2008, he lost in the second round to Janko Tipsarevic of Serbia in four sets and sounded distraught.

"You know, when you've seen the Rolling Stones from the front row, and then all of a sudden you're like, seven or eight rows back . . . " he said then.

All that counted as baggage he carried in against Hewitt on the same court and with the same eventual twilight as against Gasquet in 2007. So, after serving 43 aces and fending off three break points at 2-2 in the fifth set, the last with "the best half-volley I've probably ever hit in my life," and wriggling through in the last two games, Roddick felt he'd changed his seating.

"Getting closer," he said. "I can see what Mick Jagger is wearing now."