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WY Players at Denver PowerShares

ANDY RODDICK BEATS JAMES BLAKE FOR POWERSHARES SERIES TITLE IN DENVER

DENVER – the 2014 PowerShares Series was in Denver, February 19, 2014 and resulted in James Blake losing to Andy Roddick in the final match of the evening. 

Question:  Be the first to name the three (3) tennis players from Wyoming that are in the Media Wall Photo on our USTA WY Website, that are watching the Blake – Roddick final, and win a great prize from USTA Wyoming.  Send your email to Dave Boon at dave@ustawyoming.com

Now for the rest of the story …….  Andy Roddick and James Blake, stalwarts on the U.S. Davis Cup team for a decade, reunited Wednesday as rookies on the 2014 PowerShares Series circuit competing in the “Champions Showdown” in the mile-high altitude of the Pepsi Center. However, both American tennis standouts were not on the same bench cheering for each other against the tennis teams of the rest of the world, but playing in a championship match on this tour for legend tennis players over the age of 30. Despite being a full year longer off the ATP World Tour than Blake, Roddick was able maintain his certain level of supremacy over Blake, beating the long-time U.S. Davis Cup No. 2 by a 6-3 margin in the one-set championship match in front of an appreciative Colorado crowd.

The two joined the PowerShares Series circuit together for the first time this season – Wednesday marking Blake’s debut event while Roddick was baptized last week in winning the title in Birmingham, Alabama.

“It’s not really fair,” said Roddick before the final of playing Blake. “He’s still skinny. He’s been retired for like six weeks? I got a head start on retirement. He’s much skinner, athletic and good-looking” later adding that Blake, who studied for two years at Harvard before turning pro, was also “more educated.”

With strong serving and benefitting from errors from Blake, Roddick raced out to a quick 3-0 lead in the final and held a break point to take a 4-0 lead before Blake settled into the match and held serve to get onto the scoreboard. With Roddick serving at 4-2, Blake was able to capitalize on a few untimely Roddick errors and became more aggressive on Roddick’s second serve to break back. However, Blake missed four forehands in the next game to again drop serve before Roddick served out the match.

In the semifinals, Roddick defeated Mark Philippoussis 6-3 in a battle of bruising serves played just six days after their meeting in Birmingham that gained notoriety for Philippoussis hitting Roddick in the groin directly with a serve.  The incident quickly became viral and ended up on the tail end of the monologue for famed comedian Jimmy Fallon on “The Tonight Show” Tuesday night.   

Roddick was asked Wednesday in his pre-match interview with Tennis Channel’s Brett Haber if he was wearing body armor for his match with Philippoussis. Roddick laughed and said, “Playing Phlip, there is, apparently, a pretty good chance of getting hit in the schmeckle.”

Blake defeated current U.S. Davis Cup captain Jim Courier 6-3 in the other semifinal in the first professional meeting between the two American standouts.

We also had 5 students from PODER Academy accompany John Agin to the matches and they got to participate in a 10 and Under hitting session on the same court that the pro’s played on – very COOL! 

 

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