Roddick stays on course

2007-06-27 16:40

London - Andy Roddick crushed Thai star Danai Udomchoke's Wimbledon dream to march into the third round with a straight sets win on Wednesday.

The American third seed, twice a runner-up here, won 6-3 6-4 7-6 (7/3) and will now play either Spain's Fernando Verdasco or Andreas Seppi of Italy for a place in the last 16.

It was a case of what might have been for Asian Games champion Danai, who managed to create no fewer than ten break points against the mighty Roddick serve but managed to exploit only one of them.

Danai, flying the Thai flag in the men's competition in the absence of the injured Paradorn Srichaphan, had showed no signs of being intimidated by the Centre Court atmosphere as he confidently won his opening service game to love.

But a scorching backhand down the line earned Roddick three break points in the fourth game of the set and he took the third of them to establish an early advantage.

Danai had chances to break back at 2-4 and 3-5 but could not take them and Roddick's huge serve got him out of trouble when his opponent threatened again in the second game of the second set.

From 0-40 down, the American fired down two service winners and an ace to get to deuce, and then clipped the lines with two big forehands to close out the game.

Danai appeared visibly deflated and the match began to slip away from him when Roddick claimed his second break of the afternoon in the fifth game of the set.

A disguised cross-court pass from well behind the baseline allowed the American to clinch another break in the opening game of the third set.

Although his opponent finally managed to convert a break point at 2-4 down and take the set into a tie-break, Roddick won the tie-break comfortably, bringing proceedings to a halt after one hour and 44 minutes with yet another unreturnable serve.

- AFP