Fish-Roddick Win Opening Round Doubles Match in Atlanta
Longtime friends Mardy Fish & Andy Roddick are pairing up at the BB&T Atlanta Open this week, and the two Americans won their first-round match on Wednesday, downing the team of Yen-Hsen Lu & Jonathan Marray, 7-6(2), 6-4.
“When you don’t play for that long, you don’t know what to expect,” said Roddick, who hasn’t played since September 2012. “I had a blast. I wanted to win that really badly. It was a lot of fun at the end when we realized we had won. I had fun and I think Mardy did too. There was a lot of rust out there, but we masked it well.”
Fish added, “The crowd was great. It’s good to do it here in Atlanta.”
Fish and Roddick, a wild card in Atlanta, move on to play the third-seeded duo of American Eric Butorac & New Zeleand’s Artem Sitak in the quarterfinals. The pair defeated Matthew Ebden & Adrian Mannarino in their opening-round contest.
Top-seeds Bob & Mike Bryan coasted into the final eight with a 6-2, 6-1 win over Australian’s Sam Groth & Chris Guccione.
While it was a good day for Americans in doubles, the same could not be said for the singles play in Atlanta on Wednesday, as the three Americans in action were all ousted in straight sets.
Jared Donaldson lost to seventh-seed Gilles Muller, Christopher Eubanks fell to Radek Stepanek and Tim Smyczek was defeated by Ricardas Berankis.
Second-seeded Canadian Vasek Pospisil and fifth-seed Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus advanced, while Japan’s Go Soeda took out the fourth-seeded Adrian Mannarino 6-2, 6-4.
