Times Online: Roddick: I can win from the baseline

Andy Roddick has vowed to stay rooted to the baseline despite Wimbledon great Pete Sampras lamenting the current dearth of attacking tennis at the All England Club.

The big-hitting American powered into the quarter-finals with a 6-2, 7-5, 7-6 victory over Paul-Henri Mathieu to keep the Stars and Stripes flying on Independence Day.

The Wimbledon third seed bludgeoned the gifted if temperamental Frenchman out of contention on Centre Court, moving to the net on just a couple of occasions.

Sampras, who won seven Wimbledon titles, declared he would be “licking his chops” at the prospect of playing against that style on grass, but Roddick refuses to change his approach.

“I agree that’s the best way for Pete to win. But is it the best way for a lot of guys to win? No,” he said. “Obviously I can’t sit here and question Pete’s opinions on how to play grass court tennis.

“But I don’t know if you can generalise by saying that serve and volley is the best way for everybody to play on grass.”

Roddick extended his winning run of tie-breaks to 18 on his way to dispatching Mathieu, despite looking dead and buried at 5-0 down in the third set decider.

But the Frenchman, who had also choked earlier when serving for the third set, squandered a set point with a pumped-up Roddick showing remarkable composure to peg back the deficit.

“I went behind quickly but Mathieu had to hit two pretty good passing shots to get up,” said Roddick.

“Mathieu doesn’t have a serve where he’s going to hit aces the whole time, so I never felt like I was completely out of it. That being said, you’re obviously not confident when you’re down 5-0 in a breaker. I know my serve can go in bunches, two at a time sometimes.

“So I was just concentrating on trying to get a point each time on his serve.”

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