In professional tennis, time doesn’t march on, it sprints. What a player did two or three years ago can seem so far back as to be forgotten, like Usain Bolt’s rivals in the Olympic 100m dash.Andy Roddick won the US Open in 2003 and was the runner-up, to Roger Federer, in 2006. Yet, in his match Friday night at Arthur Ashe Stadium, Roddick fell behind a younger version of himself.Most of the pre-match buzz was about Roddick’s second-round opponent, Ernests Gulbis, who saw his world ranking climb to No. 38 in the first week of August after he upset James Blake.Like Roddick, Gulbis has a huge serve, a big forehand, a broad personality and an August 30 birthday. The difference is that Gulbis turned 20 before the match was over and Roddick 26.Roddick lost the first set and was down, 5-3, in the second before roaring back to win the next seven games and, ultimately, the match, 3-6, 7-5, 6-2, 7-5.“I was watching tennis today and I’m hearing I’m not the favourite in the match,” Roddick said. “I took a little bit of offence to that because, you know, I feel like I’ve proven I’m a decent player.”Serving at 5-6 in the fourth, Gulbis saved one match point with a 128-mile-per-hour serve that Roddick could not return but then hit a forehand long on the second match point, ending the drama after 2 hours 52 minutes. (NYT)Venus keeps goingTwo-time Open champ Venus Williams beat No. 27 seed Alona Bondarenko of Ukraine 6-2, 6-1 on Saturday to move on to the fourth round. The seventh-seeded Williams has lost just 11 games in three wins. She will face No. 9 seed Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland next. Radwanska beat 18th-seeded Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia 6-0, 6-3.On Friday, third-seeded Svetlana Kutznetsova became the latest upset victim when Katarina Srebotnik beat her 6-3, 6-7 (1), 6-3.
