08OPEN_BODO_Men.9a: 2004 US OPEN TEMPLATE 7/30/08 5:47 PM Page 8 Manuela Davies/doubleXposure Andy Roddick (left), the 2003 US Open winner, has reached the US Open quarterfinals or better six times, while James Blake has been a quarterfinalist twice. Cameron Spencer/Getty Images the pecking order yet to be affirmed, players may sizzle during the antipodal summer, only to fade or burn out by August. Thomas Johannson and Petr Korda are among the recent surprise winners in Australia. Other notquite-made men such as David Nalbandian, Marcos Baghdatis, Rainer Schuettler, Tommy Haas, Nikolay Davydenko and (this year) JoWilfried Tsonga have gone deep at the event. Roddick, who has maxed out in the semifinals three times Down Under, knows the difference between the hard courts in New York and those of Melbourne. Right now, the US Open is the major that s kind of held the line on surface speed, resisting the big trend to slow things down, he says. I think the courts around the world in general have been slowed down way too much as a reaction to that big debate about tennis being too fast about 10 years ago. Just look at today s Top 10 I m the only guy in there who really relies on the big serve to get his game going. Ten, 15 years ago, you had a lot more big servers at or near the top of the game. 82 2 0 0 8 U S O P E N It only makes sense that the court that accommodates most styles would amply reward the most versatile player of this era, or perhaps any period: Roger Federer. He has come to Flushing Meadows seeking his fifth title in a row. Last year, he won his 27th successive match, leapfrogging John McEnroe and tying Ivan Lendl to rank right behind Bill Tilden in successive singles wins. (Tilden had a mind-boggling 42, but he played well before the Open era.) Federer also surpassed McEnroe and Lendl s shared Open era record of three consecutive titles. Federer s talent is dazzling so much so that he sometimes doesn t get quite enough credit for two qualities that enabled him to amass the greatest record in recent US Open history. First, he came to grips with the trademark ambient challenges posed by the Open: the restless crowd, the electric atmosphere of night tennis at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, the sometimes bizarre conditions that prevail during what is essentially hurricane season in New York. The key on that front was Federer s successful defense of his first (2004) title. New York has definitely grown on me, Federer has said, I think especially since that famous final against Agassi here a few years ago (2005), I started to really love this tournament Just the difficulty to win here I wasn t aware of it in the very beginning when I came on tour, really. But beyond coming to grips with the Kingmaker, Federer also had to make some serious adjustments on the Xs and Os front to unlock the secrets of DecoTurf. I couldn t help but think of Roddick s analysis when Federer explained: [Early in my career] I would chip and charge, serve and volley a little bit, play like my idols basically: Becker, Edberg, Sampras. They all did it, so for me it was like, I ve got to play the same way. Then I realized things were slowing down. The new string generation came along, where returning and passing shots were made easier. It was harder to attack in some ways. But at the same time that helped me now