For Roddick and U.S. Open Fans, There's Magic in the Night

FLUSHING MEADOWS, N.Y., Sept. 1 -- A wild unpredictability seems to take hold of the fans who refuse to budge when the clock ticks past midnight at the U.S. Open and the world's best players are still slugging it out in Arthur Ashe Stadium.

Whether spurred by their love of one competitor over another or simply liberated by the cumulative effect of too much beer and afternoon sun, they bellow, bray and jeer with far more abandon than the daytime crowd.

Some players thrive on the mayhem that's unique to the wee hours here. Others let it rattle them.

American Andy Roddick is among the former, following in the tradition of players such as Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe and Andre Agassi, who realized that there was something useful to be tapped in the raw emotion of the New York sports fan.

To Roddick, each of the sport's four majors has its own character and aura. And it only makes sense to embrace each.

Take Wimbledon.

The grass-court classic is steeped in tradition, from the all-whites of the players' outfits to the staid demeanor of the British tennis fans. The coat-and-tie crowd is hushed at all the proper moments and suitably restrained even when cheering a favorite.

"I get into that when I'm there. I think it's great," Roddick said during a post-match interview Tuesday that stretched until nearly 1 a.m., as if he had nowhere particular to be and no urgency to get there. "The equivalent of that [at the U.S. Open] is the night session and the craziness -- the fact that it's a show and it's an event, as well as a tennis tournament. The more things that we have that make our events unique, I think, the better our sport is for it."

The Ashe Stadium crowd greeted Roddick with a hero's welcome, with cameras flashing and cheers erupting from the lower seating bowl to the top, when he strode onto court at 11 p.m. Monday for his first-round match.

And they hung with him well past midnight, despite however many babysitters were waiting impatiently at home, until Roddick was safely through to the tournament's second round.

Roddick, whose only major title was claimed on this court in 2003, thanked them for staying, hailing them as hard-core tennis fans.

It's doubtful Novak Djokovic was up late watching, given that he opened play Tuesday afternoon. But if he had been, the fourth-ranked Serb could have taken a lesson.

While Djokovic beat Roddick on Ashe Stadium in last year's quarterfinals, he badly misplayed the crowd, criticizing Roddick as "not nice" for making light of the multiple (and, some say, suspect) ailments that caused Djokovic to halt his previous match to receive medical attention.

New Yorkers replied with a smattering of boos. Then Djokovic made it worse, saying the fans were against him, too. It was like throwing raw meat to a malnourished shark.

Upon returning to Ashe for his first-round match Tuesday, Djokovic was neither embraced nor jeered. And ultimately it was his opponent, Ivan Ljubicic who riled the crowd -- not because of any sassy remarks, but because of his lack of passion. Ljubicic never managed to break Djokovic's serve, rarely held his own and hardly seemed to care.

It was such a halfhearted effort, it made Djokovic, who advanced, 6-3, 6-1, 6-3, look like a lion.

Perhaps now, all is forgiven.