Roddick happy with form ahead of US Open

Originally published on: 16/08/12 00:00

Having gone into the grass-court season on a run of six successive defeats, the 29-year-old American has been pleased with a summer campaign which has brought him tournament victories in Eastbourne and Atlanta.
 
“In the last six weeks I’ve played four tournaments and had two wins and two losses to top five players in the others,” Roddick said following his defeat to Jeremy Chardy in the first round of this week’s Masters 1000 tournament in Cincinnati. “I feel a lot better about where my game is at now. As far as confidence level and where I'm at, there's no comparison now compared to the beginning of the year.”
 
The only cloud on Roddick’s horizon is the back injury that troubled him during his defeat by Chardy. He will see how he recovers before deciding whether to play in next week’s tournament at Winston-Salem before heading for the US Open. “In a perfect world I'd love to play next week,” he said. “I feel like I'd benefit from that. That's what we're going to try to do.”
 
Having slipped as low as No.34 in the world rankings, Roddick is pleased to have climbed back to No.21, ensuring that he will not face too tough a draw in the first two rounds of the US Open.
 
“Then you're not playing whoever in the third round,” Roddick said. “There's a look. There's a look there to go a little further. So that was big for me. I don't have any [ranking] points at all from last summer, so it looks like I should stay there.”
 
Having been dogged by physical problems in the first part of the year, Roddick has been relieved to put together a run of tournaments. “This year has been a test, it's been frustrating at times,” he said. “It’s certainly not fun, but I didn't complain too much about the 10 years I had of clean health. I've got to try to keep it in a little bit of perspective, which is hard in the moment. But over the long haul of a career, my body has been pretty good to me.”
 

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