Andy Roddick's rationale for accepting a wild card into this week's Atlanta Tennis Championships lacked mystery.
"I want to play tennis," Roddick, the tournament's top seed and the No. 9 player in the world, said at a Monday news conference. "I've only played eight tournaments this year so far."
Roddick said he hadn't given much thought to playing in Atlanta, but made a late decision last Thursday to enter the tournament. Roddick will have a bye in the first round and play Rajeev Ram either Wednesday or Thursday. He plays doubles Tuesday night with fellow American Mardy Fish against Russia's Teymuraz Gabashvili and Poland's Michal Przysiezny.
"You can do as much as you want in practice, but at this point, I feel like I need real matches that count for something," Roddick said. "I kind of started toying with the idea and then I think about three or four hours later, it was finished."
Roddick is in somewhat familiar territory. He won the Verizon Tennis Challenge at the Atlanta Athletic Club in 2001, his first ATP title. However, in returning nine years later, Roddick said he felt "a little bit out of sorts [Monday] when I got here. I didn't know where I was going."
Roddick was sporting a self-administered, close-cropped cut, which he declined to reveal from under his baseball cap at the press conference.
Said Roddick, "It wasn't really much of a deep reasoning. I guess I had a Britney Spears moment after Wimbledon."
Roddick was upset at Wimbledon in the round of 16 in a 4-½-hour match by Taiwan's Yen-Hsun Lu.
Night court
Perhaps the most entertaining match of the day was saved for last, an evening doubles event between James Blake and Georgia alumnus John Isner and Kennesaw's Robby Ginepri and Ryan Sweeting. Isner and Blake, sometime training partners in Tampa, Fla., won in a match tiebreaker, 3-6, 6-4 (10-3).
After dropping the first set, Blake and Isner were down a break at 4-2 in the second set before rallying to win the final four games. Despite Ginepri's local ties, Blake and Isner were crowd favorites, with many of the fans wearing Georgia red.
Night to remember
Tournament director Bill Oakes did not stand still much Monday, but he paused during the opening ceremony just before the Mardy Fish-James Ward match. Oakes said he walked up to the TV tower on the stadium court to take in a moment nine years in the making. When organizers played an audio clip of the December press conference when the ATP awarded the tournament to the USTA Southern Section, "I got emotional," Oakes said.
Muller is survivor
Among the four surviving qualifiers who will play first-round matches Tuesday is Luxembourg's Gilles Muller. Once ranked in the top 50, Muller ended his 2009 season after Wimbledon to take care of inflammation in both patellar tendons.
He didn't play a match until January and his ranking fell from No. 77 in August 2009 to 459 in February.
Muller, a 2008 U.S. Open quarterfinalist, had to win three qualifying matches, the last on Monday, to make the main draw. He'll play Poland's Przysiezny.
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