This is not a great period in American tennis.  We’re not in the heyday where players like Sampras and Agassi were vying for number 1, or McEnroe and Connors were the bad boys of tennis.

Andy Roddick has to wonder how he lived through this era.  Perhaps had he played 10 years ago, he’d be challenging Agassi or Sampras for Slam titles, instead of wondering if he’ll ever win a second Slam.

And yet, once can find the true fans of American tennis, and there are still plenty of them, that root for Roddick’s success.  When the US’s most popular sports are those where international players, especially Europeans, are not as good as the best Americans (football, basketball, and baseball), tennis is a sport that the casual fan can’t quite embrace because it’s Roger Federer, a Swiss, who has dominated the sport, and Rafael Nadal, a Spaniard, who is his biggest challenge.

You have to get past Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic, Juan Martin del Potro, and Nikolay Davydenko, to find the highest ranked American player.  Yet, he’s been rooted in the top 10 since he first got there.

It’s been a surprising run.  Once thought of as a big server with a huge forehand, Andy Roddick’s game has gotten rather workmanlike.  He doesn’t play flashy tennis.  His ace count is nowhere near Ivo Karlovic.  Indeed, Andy Murray might serve more aces.  When he plays a lower ranked player, he rarely pummels them like Nadal does with his opponent, but plays nice steady tennis.  Indeed, his win over Bellucci was mostly hitting change of paces, especially his slices to goad Bellucci into errors.  One doesn’t think of Roddick as a counterpuncher, but basically that’s what he does.  He has a tightrope balancing act of hitting hard enough to keep his shots aggressive, but not so hard he misses.  He doesn’t mind the long rallies.  In the past year, he has tried to hone his aggressive instincts, under the tutelage of Larry Stefanki.

Roddick might do well against lower ranked players.  Indeed, it’s one reason he stays in the top 10.  It’s the top guys that make Roddick’s life tough.  He lacks Federer’s all-court genius, the footspeed and power baseline game of Nadal, the precision shotmaking of Djokovic, the bludgeoning power of del Potro, the guile and retrieving ability of Murray, nor the precision of Nikolay Davydenko.  What Roddick does have is his serve and his steadiness and his heart.  Some days, it’s good enough.

How are the other Americans doing?  For a while, it looked like James Blake might be the other guy that would do well in Slams, but now that he’s 30, those chances seem slim.  What works in Blake’s favor is his physique, which is a bit freakish fora  tennis player, and that he was a late bloomer.  Blake plays the way one imagined Roddick might.  Blake is like the poor man’s Federer, a guy that takes a lot of chances, but doesn’t have the variety of Federer.

Past him, one had thought perhaps Robby Ginepri, but he has played up and down over the years.  The two big names in American tennis are the two biggest players: Sam Querrey and John Isner.  Due to a freak accident last year, Querrey had to take the rest of 2009 off to recover.  Up to then, he had had a very good summer prior to the US Open and won a title too.  It was hoped that the Asian tour would help him solidify his ranking.

John Isner, meanwhile, won his first tournament in Auckland over Arnaud Clement.  He upset Roddick at the US Open and is still in the Aussie Open after winning his second round match, the beneficiary of Gilles Simon dropping out due to injury and getting a seed.  Is Isner ahead of Querrey now?

The problem both players have is footwork.  They aren’t nearly as speedy as the top 10 players, and these days, speed is the name of the game.

Then, there are players like Taylor Dent, Wayne Odesnik, who play well here and there, but don’t have the upside to make it to the top 20.

American tennis may not be where, say, Spanish tennis is now, but for true fans of tennis, there’s still stuff to admire.