Fish Almost Catches Roddick at ATP Memphis

Fish delivered 17 aces during the contest, five more than Roddick, but played a poor third-set tiebreak to drop the match.

"He played better than I did for the majority of the match," Roddick said. "I thought he served pretty well and I didn't have much of a chance to break. He probably had more chances than I did. He just made a couple of sloppy errors in the third-set tiebreaker."

Fish, now 0-3 in 2006, is returning from two wrist surgeries.

"It's nice to play a good match against, obviously, a good player like Andy and for my wrist to hold up like that against a serve that big," Fish said. "It's very encouraging."

Roddick survived where the other three seeds in action fell Tuesday, with upsets orchestrated by Russian Dmitry Tursunov (d. (4) Ginepri), Belgian Kristof Vliegen (d. (5) Blake), and Swede Robin Soderling (d. (7) Mirnyi 0-and-1), all in straight sets.

It was the second consecutive first-round losses for the Americans Blake (after San Jose) and Ginepri (Delray Beach).

Croatian "Dr." Ivo Karlovic (d. Pless from a set down) led the remaining unseeded winners into the second round, joined by Frenchman Julien "United Colors of" Benneteau (d. Wang from a set down, saving a match point), and Aussie Wayne "The Serving Machine" Arthurs (d. Zib) who will now square off against Roddick.

On tap for Wednesday in Memphis are San Jose winner Andy Murray vs. Schuettler, (Q) Gimelstob vs. (6) Haas, (1) Roddick vs. Arthurs, Bjorkman vs. (2) Kiefer, (WC) Jenkins vs. Goldstein in an all-American, and Spadea vs. Reynolds in an all-American.