Roddick may not play Davis Cup
Now Andy Roddick’s status for the Davis Cup quarterfinal between the United States and Spain at Joel Coliseum is in question.
Roddick was forced to retire with a hamstring injury in the first set of a match against Andy Murray yesterday afternoon in the quarterfinals of the Sony Ericsson Open in Key Biscayne, Fla.
An MRI performed later in the day showed that Roddick had a Grade 1 strain of his left hamstring, which is the least-severe category on the scale.
Patrick McEnroe, the U.S. Davis Cup captain, said last night that initial reports were good and that Roddick is still hoping to play.
Roddick, the No. 3-ranked player in the world, has eight full days to recover before the first singles matches, scheduled for Friday, April 6.
“The word is from Andy that he is going to do everything he can to try to play Davis Cup,” McEnroe said. “Of course, that is great news to my ears, the captain’s ears. If he can’t play, we’ll have a better idea in about three days how he has come up. The problem is that it is not the sort of injury that you can sort of play through. It will either heal quickly and he’ll be able to practice for a few days and be able to go, or he won’t. And we obviously will have to go to Plan B. But he is certainly going to do everything in his power to give himself a shot to play next week.”
Roddick retired 29 minutes into his quarterfinal match against Murray yesterday, trailing 5-3 in the first set at the time. He said that the injury occurred while he was lunging for a shot in the fifth game. He took a medical timeout at one point but eventually made the decision to retire when it became clear that the injury wasn’t going away.
“He hit a volley behind me, and I kind of lunged at it, and I just kind of jarred something at first,” Roddick told reporters at the tournament. “And more and more it started becoming like a sharp pain, and then I started feeling it even when I was just kind of cruising around the court, not even in points.”