“I had him up against the locker” When Andy Roddick almost hit Novak Djokovic after the Serb beat him in the US Open
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Andy Roddick and Novak Djokovic
21-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic and former World No. 1 Andy Roddick played very few matches against each other but nevertheless had the quality of being a big rivalry had they got the chance to play more often. The 2003 US Open champion took a rather early retirement from the sport hanging his boots in 2012, just around the time when Djokovic was starting to become the dominant force on the Tour.
While the two players are separated by 4-years, Roddick was quite senior to the Serbian and could have added a lot more Grand Slam titles to his name had it not been for Roger Federer, a mutual nemesis for both Novak and Andy. Roddick and Djokovic met 9 times on the Tour with Roddick leading the head-to-head battle narrowly by 5-4. The quarter-final match in the 2007 Montreal Masters was the first time the two met while the 2nd round match at 2012 Olympics was the last time they met, both matches won by Djokovic.
“Novak Djokovic beat the pants off of me”: Andy Roddick
At the 2008 US Open, both Novak and Andy were looking for their second career Grand Slam title with only Djokovic being more confident having won his maiden major at the 2008 Australian Open. With the head-to-head at 1-1 along with Roddick’s experience and Novak’s youthfulness, the match was evenly poised. The result however was not as Djokovic qualified for the semis with a 6-2, 6-3, 3-6, 7-6(5) win over the American much against the wishes of the crowd who had started booing Novak during and after the match.
“I got in the locker room, after-a-match confrontation with this tennis player one time. We were going back and forth. I won’t say his name, I’ll just say that it rhymes with ‘Schmovak Schmokovic.’ We got into at the U.S. Open one time. I was kind of talking trash and he came out and beat the pants off of me as he would, but then kind of chirped afterwards.
“So he comes straight in, I went right up to him and had him up against the locker, but then I realized his trainer was about a little bit bigger than Donovan [McNabb, who was on the Fox panel] here, and I kind of checked myself. My trainer is about 5-foot-8, 130, and he can dodge raindrops. And I kind of backed off real quick. I was about to get railroaded from the side,” said Roddick years later while appearing as an analyst for Fox Sports.
Neither of the players took the matter seriously after Djokovic’s reply to Roddick and they cleared the differences pretty soon. Post the defeat in US Open, Roddick won their next 4 meetings, all in the quarter-finals of different events before Djokovic won the final two meetings to narrowly fall behind the American in the head-to-head.
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Sarthak Shitole
(3462 Articles Published)