Sniff, sniff .
. . chronicles of Roddick: the epitaph . . . The diarist observed a minute's silence when Andy Roddick finally bowed out of the business of tennis and, more importantly for yours truly, the business of tennis anecdotes. Thankfully he left a few things in the can for us to remember him by.
After a round of applause in the interview room, one hack brought up an episode when he was 17 years old and being mobbed by fans at Delray Beach, one of whom asked him to sign her bosom. "I had never seen a boob before, to be honest," he said.
His post-match press conference provided enough quotes to fill a slim volume, a seminal moment in American journalism on a par with Woodward and Bernstein.
Serving out his last game against Juan Martin del Potro with tears welling in his eyes, was he losing it? "Yeah, literally losing it," he said. "I almost got broken."
He had then tried, unsuccessfully, to 'bottle' the emotion on court at that moment. "I was trying," he said. "It was challenging."
Unlike Andre Agassi, who had a speech prepared, Roddick meandered through an off-the-cuff, rather shambolic few minutes on court. "I didn't think of it [preparing some remarks]," he said. "I probably should have."
After so many big matches in Arthur Ashe, surely he couldn't remember the first time he was in there. "I hit in it when I was a junior, warmed [Carlos Moya] up. But I played Slava Dosedel in 2001, won 6-4, 6-2, 6-1, so yes."
It turns out Roger Federer isn't such a perfectionist after all. The No.1 seed crashed out to Tomas Berdych in the early hours of yesterday morning, the big Czech understandably taking umbrage about comparisons with Lukas Rosol beating Rafa Nadal at Wimbledon.
"I just hope you're not comparing me with Rosol," said Berdych, glowering at his prey. "You did. You just said there was a bit of an upset and Rosol beat Nadal and then you mentioned my match here."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article