Roddick can prove the real deal

This year he qualified to play in the Wimbledon junior event as well as the main draw. He skipped the kids stuff and went on with his alarmingly ungoverned game to send a shiver down the spine of the world's best. When the soaring Goran Ivanisevic took him out in the third round there was a collective sigh.

Andy Roddick was a talented gunslinger, the Croatian an easy touch who'd been around too long. We know how that ended.

This year Ivanisevic generated some hasty revisionism about the state of his mind and game; Roddick in his first Wimbledon confirmed early reports we should believe the hype. While his style has been occasionally unrestrained and always dynamic, Roddick is compelling. The teenager goes into this week's US Open still burning a vapour trail. Sneaking his third ATP title of the year in the Legg Mason final just before his 19th birthday, Roddick's coltish enthusiasm has ensured a buzz.

That's not bad work for a teenager. Roddick lines up with Andre Agassi, Pat Rafter, who continues to threaten to retire at the end of the year, title holder Marat Safin and Pete Sampras, as well as a great deal of puff surrounding Boris Becker's return to the ring in a $100,000 match against the unretiring John McEnroe.

There was some disappointment Roddick did not get the chance to face Agassi in the Legg Mason final. Instead he was left to demolish Sjeng Schalken 6-2, 6-3.

Hardly a significant workout but while "Hot Rod's" back-to-back wins earlier in the year in Atlanta and Houston were on clay, the win in Washington was on hardcourt, the same as the Open, and perfectly timed.

The Atlanta tournament in March was his debut on clay and, having already beaten Pete Sampras in the previous Masters series in Miami, he captured the title beating Belgium's Xavier Malisse in the final. Roddick dropped serve only twice in 51 attempts and hit 29 aces. That demonstration of power made him the first American teenager to win an ATP title since Michael Chang (19) in 1992.

More importantly consider how far Roddick has travelled in the 12 months since this time last year. When he played in the Legg Mason as a 17-year-old wild card in 2000, he was ranked 596th in the world. That's a lower ranking than some of the Irish players currently on the circuit.

Amazingly he is now 16th and seeded at the US Open, which should allow him avoid the elite players until the second week of what is being plugged as the world's biggest purse in the world's biggest city.

The prize money for the Open will top the $15.8 million mark with the men's and women's singles champions receiving equal prize money of $850,000 each. The total prize money is $3 million more than Wimbledon, with the next nearest non-tennis event, the Daytona 500 offering $10 million.

In addition the women's singles championship has been moved to prime time on CBS for the first time in its history.

"He is confident. You can see that," said Schalken after the final. "Every time he needed a big serve, it was there. I kept waiting for a couple of serves but I didn't get any."

Frequently topping 130 m.p.h. with his delivery Roddick is anything but a one-trick horse. His whiplash forehand is equally as destructive and his competitive instincts are refreshingly sharp. He can even volley. Give Roddick a misplaced lob at the net and he's three feet off the ground hitting the ball out of the stadium. Spectators lap it up.

Doubts remain over his mental stamina to survive seven matches at a grand slam event but Roddick is broadly regarded as the real deal.

"Andy is going to be one of the great ones," said John McEnroe as he watched him at Wimbledon. "He has a wonderful serve and the biggest forehand. He volleys well and he mixes it up. America needs him big time."

So too do they need the Williams sisters, Serena and Venus, while world number one Martina Hingis continues to put herself under huge pressure. She needs to bag a grand slam quickly to convince her envious rivals she is deserving of the top rank.

Of the Williams sisters, it is Serena who goes into the event with form, although Venus is the title holder and Wimbledon champion.

Serena overcame her nemesis Jennifer Capriati 6-1, 6-7 (7) 6-3 in the tour final in Toronto last week and for the first time in five months displayed a ability to close out a match.

Also still a teenager Serena's defeat of Capriati was significant because the Australian and French Open champion had beaten her the last four times they had played including three set victories at Roland Garros and Wimbledon.

Given that Serena has a proven talent to beat anyone, the younger Williams has leaped an important psychological hurdle. Her complaints at Wimbledon that she was sick, her father Richard's increasingly absurd attempts at self-publicity and her confession she was addicted to online shopping - "I wasn't able to stop and I bought, bought, bought. It was out of control" - are a few of the peripheral issues that constantly follow the family.

And if the two sisters meet will daddy Williams flip a coin in the locker-room and send the siblings out with instructions as he has already been accused of doing? That's the tip of the colourful tennis-circuit iceberg. No wonder Rafter is threatening to walk.

"The better you're doing the more commitments you have and the nicer you have to be," he mused recently. "And that's not natural for me. I'm such a fake. I just want to be an asshole."

Maybe Roddick has a role model right there.