Things for Andy Roddick have gone from bad to worse. Unfortunately for the American, he is the story in tennis here in the U.S. Swiss stars Roger Federer and Martina Hingis certainly have been the overall story this year in the sport, stateside we care about stateside players, and our top dog is Roddick.

This afternoon in a lackluster performance, Roddick, the third seed at the Indian Wells Tennis Masters Series, was stunned by little-known Russian Igor Andreev. After dropping the first set Roddick rallied in the second and it looked for all the world that he would pull away in the third.

Roddick held three break points on Andreev’s serve in the first game of the third set but failed to convert and then completely went away from there losing the final set 6-1.

“I went on walkabout,” Roddick said after the 6-4, 6-7, 6-1 loss. “It was just like a blur.You’re out there for two hours, and I let it get away from me in five minutes.

“By no means am I taking away from the way Igor played,” he added. “His ball was jumping off the court. I was extremely impressed with the way he served. He won the match.”

The setback continues a recent string of defeats for former No. 1 who was stunned at the Australian Open by Marcos Baghdhatis, then at Davis Cup to Andre Pavel followed by a losses to Andy Murray at San Jose and Julien Benneteau in Memphis.

All it comes just a 45 days or so after Roddick dumped coach Dean Goldfine in favor of older brother John.

“I’m not going to sit here and put on my fun face,” said Roddick who got docked a point after smashing his racket late in the third set. “I’m not happy. I’m mad with the way I played. It’s just frustration. ”

Roddick will now have to try to set his sights on Miami which begins next week before Davis Cup and the clay season which begins in April, during which he’s not expected to fare well anyway.

Bottom line for Andy, things clearly are still not well in the camp, and if he doesn’t turn it around in Miami next week his results don’t figure to improve much thereafter until June when the grass season begins. To his credit, he did seems to go back to his basics of hammering his serve and forehand this week, but his backhand remains a critical weakness as does his shaky netplay.

Time to go watch so live tennis on the deuce…Uh oh. I see some softball on!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 15th, 2006 at 10:55 pm and is filed under Roddick. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.