Delray Beach Details

Being the top ranked American men’s tennis player, Andy Roddick can rarely fly under the radar. So when he flew into Delray Beach Friday afternoon from Austin Texas, everyone jumped to conclusions. (including us at Ar.com). Andy did discuss the potential opportunity to enter the qualifying tournament at Delray Beach with Tournament Organizers, which snowballed into a media frenzy.

“Andy had informed us that he was considering playing in our qualifying tournament, as direct entries were closed and our wild cards had been distributed weeks in advance. However, he did not commit and after careful consideration following an on-site training session, Andy told us that he would not participate in the qualifying tournament. Delray Beach Tournament Director, Mark Baron, set things straight, “He instead will remain in South Florida and resume training for the upcoming Davis Cup tie. We were obviously looking forward to Andy’s participation, we wish him good luck next week and we hope he will play next year.”

Initially Andy was looking at the Qualifying entry as an opportunity to better prepare for the upcoming Davis Cup competition with Romania (Feb. 10-12) in La Jolla, California. But after careful consideration following a practice session with fellow American Vince Spadea in Delray Beach, Andy decided that a week of training in South Florida would sufficiently prepare him for next week.

“I love the wind. Awesome,” Andy voiced his discomfort with the blustering conditions at Delray Beach during the training session. Andy politely turned down any formal interviews with the media yesterday. Unfortunately, the commotion of yesterday afternoon was followed by the withdrawal of James Blake from this week’s event.

“In order to get into the tournament you have to enter 42 days in advance and Andy didn’t do that,” ATP supervisor Tom Barnes helped explain the entry process. “The only other way to get in is to get a wild card or to play qualifiers and win, or be a lucky loser if there’s a spot. Or if one of the wild cards withdrew before we made the draw.”
Vince Spadea, who played the qualifying rounds in Sydney a few weeks back, commented on the grind of the Qualifying tournament. “Playing two matches in one day is challenging,” Spadea said.

Frankly speaking, you cannot withdrawal from something you never officially entered, but in Andy’s case, the excitement surrounding his game tends to blur reality, as we have often seen in the tabloids. Ar.com is sincerely apologetic for jumping on that bandwagon. Check back to Ar.com for more of Andy in South Florida as he prepares for Davis Cup.