If you were to ask someone who hadn’t watched tennis in 5 years, how Andy Roddick plays, you might get an answer that is at odds with how he plays now.  Roddick used to have a fearsome twosome: his serve and his forehand.  Over the years, Roddick has learned an old adage about tennis, namely, the game is about errors.

For most players, Roddick is capable of hanging in the backcourt with them, getting the shot back, hitting with enough pace that he isn’t attacked so easily.  His serve is still formidable enough that even if he doesn’t hit as many aces as he used to, the returns he gets are quite manageable, thank you.  This tactic only gets him into trouble against the very best players, when he doesn’t have an attack mode to get into.

Last night, Roddick played Yen-Hsun Lu.  Lu is from Taiwan, though for political reasons, it gets listed as Chinese Taipei.  There is this polite lie that China and Taiwan have that make their co-existence possible.  If anyone watched the Chinese movie “Hero”, about the emperor who built the Great Wall, the claim is the emperor has been ruthless so he could create “one land” or one China.  There is a strong belief in this one China idea.  China maintains that Taiwan is a renegade colony, while Taiwan clings to the idea that it may one day regain control of mainland China (that part is much more make-believe).  Practically speaking, they are two separate countries that live a polite lie so big China doesn’t feel the need to get all military on Taiwan.  So, for the purposes of politics, Taiwan is often referred to as TPE which stands for China Taipei (Taipei is the capital of Taiwan).

China might be happy with a player the caliber of Yen-Hsun Lu even though Lu’s ranking hovers around 100.  While China has had a few very successful women’s singles players, most notably, Zheng Jie and Li Na, who are both in the top 20, the Chinese men aren’t anywhere near close at this point.  Lu would easily be China’s best player were he playing for China.

The commentators quickly pointed out that Lu just doesn’t have the kind of weapons to bother Roddick.  They also pointed out that he was a very hard worker, practicing before and after his matches, trying to get better.   He’s been working with Mark Woodforde, half of the stellar Woodies doubles team, to learn to be more aggressive.  Rainer Schuettler’s coach seems to be helping Lu out as well.  As with any pro ranked about 100, Lu has some skills.  He can attack his forehand.  He can hit a down the line winner.  He had Roddick on the run several times.  You could see him bothering Roddick if he could string a few good points together.

However, nearly every net foray, what few there were, were a disaster for Lu, with approaches that fell into the net, or went a little too long or too wide.  Once upon a time, approaches to the net put the baseliner at an immediate disadvantage.  Without the heavy topspin game of today, a player had to take a risky flat shot, a floaty slice shot, or lob.  These days, players have learned to take the net more, but at the risk they get passed even if the approach is quite good.  So fewer players rush the net, and hence, fewer players get the practice they need to play the net well.  But it wasn’t poor approaches that hurt Lu enough to lose.

What really hurt Lu was Andy Roddick’s serve, especially the serve out wide.  Even though Roddick wasn’t going for big bombs, Lu had a hard time picking that serve up.  Even when Lu got Roddick in extended rallies, Lu wasn’t any steadier than Roddick.  Lu’s best chances were to go on the attack, but sometimes it was Roddick controlling the points and Lu making errors.  This is how Roddick wins most of his matches.  He’s patient and powerful enough off the baseline that he doesn’t get bullied around too much.  Lower ranked players are trying to play higher ranked ones more aggressively.  Thus, the style used to attack Rafa is now becoming common place against any top ranked player.

Andy Roddick’s next challenge is up and coming Dutch player, Thiemo de Bakker.  The two met in the first round of the Australian Open, which was a convincing 6-1, 6-4, 6-4 win for Roddick.  Assuming he gets past de Bakker, he’d face the winner of Greul and Melzer, a match he’d again be favored to win.  After that, he would probably get his nemesis, Roger Federer.

In one of the more intriguing matches of the 3rd round, Roger will play Marcos Baghdatis, who has been playing pretty solid tennis as of late.  Baghdatis needed three sets to win over feisty veteran, Arnaud Clement.  Federer still owns Baghdatis, but as usual, he came into Indian Wells with his form still shaky.  This seems par for the course for Fed.  Once, we used to expect him to play dominant tennis from the get-go and watch his opponent struggle to keep up.  These days, his early round matches always look dicey.  He misfires on his forehand, his misfires on his backhand.  His opponents seem to dictate play a bit more than they should.

Still, Roger believes he gets better as the tournament moves along, and he’ll need to up his level of play to handle Baghdatis.  To be honest, Hanescu looked a lot better playing Roger yesterday than at the Australian Open where he looked sluggish and Roger looked quick as a gazelle.  Roger did play good tennis for two sets, but his accuracy dipped in the second set while Hanescu upped the level of aggression, trying to take his game to Roger.  So, at this point, Roger probably has nothing to worry about.  Even as he fell a break, he did push the second set to a tiebreak and then just narrowly lost that (after falling back in the tiebreak).

Federer would then play the winner of Robredo and Sela, again, neither player would probably worry Roger, with Robredo being the player more favored to reach Roger based on ranking, but Sela, amazing, has a 3-0 head-to-head with Robredo, so expect an upset here.

Today, Djokovic plays Kohlschreiber.  They’ve only played twice.  Kohlschreiber beat Djokovic at the French last year, and Djokovic beat him in Indian Wells, the year before, rather handily.

Rafael Nadal plays Mario Ancic.  The two have played 4 times, but the bulk of that was played some 6 years ago and even then, Nadal was usually the winner.  Nadal has a 3-1 head-to-head over Ancic.  They haven’t played since 2008 and that match was on clay.