Business as Usual at US Open as Roddick Rants and Brits Are Pants

Le Bifcake

You've got to love those Frenchies when they get on a tennis court, even the ones with the distinctly un-French names like Mauresmo, Bartoli, Rezai and Tsonga. You can add to that list the 24-year-old with the backhand to die for, Vaibhav Richard Gasquet Kaushik, the man who knows how to give such a powerful French kiss that he can suck the cocaine right out of a woman, who dumped Nilolay Davydenko out of the US Open yesterday, thus giving the Russian more time to prepare for the benighted non-event that calls itself the Macau Tennis Showdown.

At the start of the week, France had 14 of the 128 men that lined up for the first round, compared to a miserable one for Great Britain (giving the Brits the same representation as such tennis powerhouses as India, Israel, Cyprus, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Portugal and Jamaica, one fewer than mighty Slovakia and two fewer than Boratland). And Les Bleus have not been content to rest on their laurels, as only two of the 14 lost in the first round, and four of the five already to have played their second round matches have won their passage safely through to round 3 (the only loser being drawn against another Froggie, so many are there of them in the men's draw.)

If Britain are bad, then the US and A don't have much to shout about either, with Serena Wiliams dropping out with a mystery ailment (Tourette's?), sister Venus seeking her first Grand Slam away from the grass of Wimbledon in seven years and their number one men's player, the fading Andy Roddick, imploding like a bagel in a microwave.

Roddick, who's one of the more intelligent and witty players on the tour, is clearly trying to come to terms with the fact that he can no longer compete at the highest level without a return of serve. His cause may not have been helped by a mild dose of glandular fever ("mononucleosis", if you're from across the pond) earlier in the year but he was never at the races against the bespectacled, Dostoevsky-reading Serb, Janko Tipsarevic,

possessor of one of the hottest wives on the circuit, Biljana Sesevic.

Roddick railed against a lines judge who didn't know left from right in a petulant, if articulate, 15-minute hissy-fit – interrupted only by a bizarre interlude in which he stormed off to change his shorts – which couldn't conceal the poverty of his play. The power of the performance was enough to mesmerise even the umpire, Enric Molina, who seems to have forgotten that the men and women who make the line calls are part of his team and deserve to be treated with the same respect that he would expect to be shown to himself.

Later, at his press conference, Roddick said he was "stupefied" that the lineswoman had mixed up his two feet (by this time, he would have been able to watch the replay and see that her call had been absolutely correct).

Not, I can assure you, Andy, half as stupefied as those of us who witnessed your lamentable meltdown.