Wimbledon Diary, Day 12

© Getty ImagesBrooklyn Decker convinced her husband, Andy Roddick, not to give up on tennis a year ago.

ATPWorldTour.com takes a look at the news and talking points at The Championships on Friday.

What The Papers Are Saying
“For a woman who professes to know little about tennis, she made the best decision of Andy Roddick’s life,” leads The Times as it highlights the influence Brooklyn Decker has had on the career of her husband in the past 12 months since his second-round defeat to Janko Tipsarevic at The Championships in 2008. “The American was on the verge of quitting the sport after being dumped out of Wimbledon a year ago. Then Brooklyn, his wife, intervened. She convinced Roddick to keep trying. 'I was probably leaning towards not really playing that well,' Roddick said last night. 'She didn’t know much about tennis — she thought I was playing really great. Anyway, she thought I looked cute in shorts. Brook has been a calming influence and someone that I can confide in and not have to put on a super-brave front to. And you know, she makes the players’ box better-looking.'"

“Wow! What a day! I’m in a Wimbledon final again and, if I’m honest, I probably didn’t think that would be something I’d say again. It’s a dream,” exclaimed Andy Roddick in his blog for The Daily Mail. Looking ahead to his third Wimbledon final, the American said: “Now the mind turns to Federer and the small matter of arguably the greatest player to ever play the game! It’s got the makings of a great match and, although Roger has beaten me in two Wimbledon finals, our last couple of games have gone the distance and ended up very close. I’m excited about this one and this time won’t be putting too much pressure on myself.”

The Daily Mail also managed to find one weakness in Roger Federer’s game that perhaps Roddick could look to exploit in their 21st meeting: “Yesterday, however, confirmed one weakness in Federer's game which the German (Tommy Haas) missed. Federer somehow managed a 100 per cent failure rate in his challenges. Five times he questioned a line judge's call by going to the electronic eye in the sky and five times he got it wrong, sometimes by centimetres rather than millimetres. Federer 0 Hawkeye 5. It is amazing to think that Federer has achieved all that he has despite suffering from eyesight difficulties. Maybe not clinically blind but how else can you explain the above statistic? Roger Federer, as one wag declared, is tennis's Mr Magoo.”

Ian Chadband of The Telegraph looks at how Roddick can possibly avoid a 19th defeat to Federer in their third meeting in a Wimbledon final. “Their career head-to-head record reads thus: Federer won 18, Roddick won 2. In finals, it is 6-0. In grand slams, 7-0. In grand slam finals, 3-0. No wonder the 26-year-old’s last refuge after a Fed match is to resort to gallows humour. Take Roddick’s nadir. Two years ago, after the semi-final of the Australian Open in which he had been obliterated 6-4 6-0 6-2, losing to Federer for the ninth time in a row, he was asked how it felt. “It was frustrating. It was miserable. It sucked. It was terrible,” Roddick responded deadpan. “Besides that, it was fine.” Yet even then, he refused to feel sorry for himself. “Do you want me to come in here and kick my ass on a daily basis? It’s not going to happen. I’m going to try to keep fighting.” “I don’t know how much my great record against Roddick would come into play on Sunday,” mused Federer. “It starts from zero.” He is taking nothing for granted, though. He can imagine even now that A-Rod is probably barking to himself: “No one beats Andy Roddick 19 times.”

Finally, Owen Gibson of The Guardian takes a look at how the credit crunch has reversed spending trends at The Championships: “In an inversion of the usual order, inconspicuous consumption is the order of the day in the hospitality marquees at Wimbledon this year while outside the public are spending record amounts on Pimm's, strawberries and branded merchandise. All England Club officials have confirmed that not only are there fewer bookings from the banks and blue chip companies that normally spend hundreds of thousands entertaining at Wimbledon, but those who have come are spending less. Yet outside the discreet marquee village, business is booming. By yesterday a record 475,812 ticket holders had passed through the gates, sales of jewellery in the All England Club shop were up by 35% and there were lengthy queues for food and drink. Meanwhile, in the hospitality area an understated, almost apologetic air prevailed.”

Headline Of The Day
“Roddy hell, it’s 73 years of hurt”, lamented The Sun after Andy Murray’s four-set semi-final loss to Andy Roddick, ending the dream of the Scot becoming the first British champion at Wimbledon since Fred Perry in 1936.

Murray Mania
“Andy Murray bookies are saved from huge payout,” leads The Mirror. “A spokesman for William Hill admitted: "We would have paid out more than we ever have before on any individual at a tennis tournament." A Murray win in the final would have seen the betting industry pay out £10million. And one punter - Welsh policeman Merfyn Griffiths - had good reason to be cursing his luck. In 2004 he backed Murray to win Wimbledon at 200/1 and stood to collect £16,000. Mr Griffiths' bet has another year to run yet.”

The loss was doubly disappointing for Murray fans who had paid over the odds earlier in the week for Wimbledon final tickets. “Fans of Andy Murray who paid over the odds for Wimbledon final tickets in the hope of seeing the Briton enter the record books tried to recoup their losses on Saturday,” reports The Guardian. “Ticket resale websites saw a flurry of activity as deflated Murray fans, some of whom had paid as much as seven times the face value for tickets for Sunday's final, put them up for sale."No longer going as there is no Murray," one post read, advertising a pair of tickets for Sunday's final at 1,300 pounds ($2,134) after having bought them for 750 pounds each a week earlier.”

Three-time former Wimbledon champion Boris Becker looks specifically at the point he feels lost the semi-final match for Andy Murray. “On Friday night he will be lying awake going over and over that set point in the third set tie-break, when he returned Andy Roddick's second serve and the rally began, and Roddick saved himself with a mis-hit volley. Murray will have been dreaming about that moment all night. That was his chance to win the match. For him to have come back at all from 2-5 down, against one of the biggest servers in the game, was almost a miracle anyway. Stealing that set would have won the psychological battle. If Roddick had missed, or had Murray passed him, it would have been nervous energy about playing in his first Wimbledon final, against Roger Federer, that would have stopped him from sleeping. Instead, it will have been the would have, should have and could have.”

“Roddick was asked by American reporters "what it was like to shoot Bambi",” quips The Guardian as it laments Murray’s loss to the American. “Different Brit, same outcome. The 73-year wait for a British men's Wimbledon singles winner will stretch to at least 74 after Andy Murray lost in four sets to an inspired Andy Roddick on Centre Court. A scrap of consolation is that Murray is still only 22 and remains a likely future champion on these lawns.”

A shop selling television sets in Murray's hometown of Dunblane profited greatly from the Scot’s run through to the semi-finals. “Burgess and Gibson said they were inundated with people looking to replace old sets with HD-ready screens,” reports The Mirror. “They had to send engineers on a trek to Glasgow for more as sales rose 150%. Owner Alex Phillips, 62, admitted Murray Mania might just have saved his business, which had been struggling with the credit crunch. He said: "We saw sales drop 50% recently. People don't have the money at the moment so this is great for us.”

Statistic Of The Day
During The Championships fortnight The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent and the newspapers’ Sunday titles, wrote 189,951 words on news relating to Andy Murray, who lost in the Wimbledon semi-finals on Friday.

Andy Murray was the ninth different British male to reach the semi-finals of The Championships, since the abolishment of the Challenge Round in 1922.