Roddick's removal van is too slick for Udomchoke

TENNIS:He was ranked 100 places below Andy Roddick. He was from a non-threatening tennis country, Thailand. He has never won an ATP title. He has lost more matches on grass than he has won.

No surprise that the American flag remains flying over the foul London skies.

Roddick escaped yesterday's late pall of rain clouds and took just three sets over one hour and 44 minutes to see off his early round challenger, Danai Udomchoke, 6-3, 6-4, 7-6.

For the fourth time Roddick has come to Wimbledon having won at Queen's seeking an elusive first championship. He is the player who will curse the planetary interaction that overlapped his earth life with that of Roger Federer.

Nonetheless, he keeps moving forward, some thing that Federer, Tim Henman, James Blake and Marat Safin were unable to do yesterday because of the dreary and forlorn, the funereal and desolate, the sombre and caliginous skies.

But sunny Roddick, along with a few other names, including Frenchman Richard Gasquet, sat pretty in their well appointed hotels while the others served time in tennis jail.

The locker-room can close in on players on days like these and when the rain fell at around tea-time, it had no intention of going away, even after the interminably optimistic announcements over the public address system that urged patrons to hang in there for bright spells.

They never arrived.

But Roddick had earlier fed off his heavy serve again and Udomchoke could do little about it. The match didn't go all the American's way, in part due to the gamey approach of his 114-ranked opponent and part because of the conditions here this year that are unpredictable and at times challenging.

That even extended to Tony Blair's accession of 10 Downing Street and Gordon Brown stepping up to the plate as British Prime Minister.

Roddick's view was at once charming and a comment on what we serve up these days as news brought a few smiles in the after-match press conference, especially among the British press.

"The funniest thing I saw today when I woke up was that they televised the moving van literally pulling up and they followed the moving van down the street when he's moving his crap out. I mean that's hilarious," observed Roddick.

"We need to get a moving van in the States somewhere. I'm not going to pretend to know much about the political views of Gordon Brown.

"I think I'd be on the verge of ignorance if I touched on that anymore. But I'm a big fan of the televising of the moving van."

That aside, the wind, the cold and the different aspect to Centre Court without the roof has introduced more variables to the matches this year.

That usually feeds into the weaker players in the draw as there are more equalising factors for the top-seeded players to contend with.

"It is a kind of inconsistent wind. It's blowing one minute, it's not and then it's blowing hard and then it switches directions," said Roddick.

For a big server that could be a negative factor but his statistics were satisfactory.

His first serve won over 80 per cent of the points in all three sets while his second serve earned him an average of over 60 per cent of the points throughout the match.

He was regularly knocking it down to Udomchoke at 140 mph, averaging 128 mph for the entire match.

Compared to his opponent's fastest delivery, Roddick was, as he wished he might be with regard to Federer, on a different planet.

Udomchoke's fastest serve, at 123 mph, was also significantly slower than Roddick's average.

Now Roddick can rest, while the rest scramble to catch up.