Ryan Harrison: Can He Become the Next Andy Roddick of U.S. Tennis?

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at Internationaled.org

Published: February 2, 2011

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Lost in the news of Novak Djokovic winning the 2011 Australian Open—and rightfully so—was what happened at the ATP's Honolulu Challenger tournament in Hawaii this past weekend.

There, 18-year-old American Ryan Harrison won the first significant title of his career. It comes 10 years after another player from the U.S. did the same on his way to a Hall of Fame career (which some might say is still going strong).

Back in 2001, Andy Roddick, only 18 at the time, plowed through the field and beat fellow American James Blake in the final. Harrison's route to the '11 title played out similarly, defeating top-100 players Ryan Sweeting and Michael Russell before taking out another fellow countryman, Alex Kuznetsov, in the finals.

It was a great performance from Harrison, particularly after falling in the first round to Frenchman Adrian Mannarinohe as an Australian Open wildcard.

Roddick didn't play in Australia that year, but the Hawaii win jump-started him to his first notable accomplishments:

Defeating Pete Sampras, who was still a top-five player, for the first time Notching a double-digit win streak on clay. Advancing to his first Grand Slam quarterfinal Beating a reigning No. 1 (Gustavo Kuerten) Helping the U.S. advance to the World Group in Davis Cup Now, just because Harrison won Hawaii 10 years after Roddick doesn't mean that he will pull off anything close to the older American's feats. But there has to be a sense of optimism surrounding Harrison, which started with the impressive form he displayed at the 2010 U.S. Open.

For his part, Roddick has embraced being in the mentor-role for the young American.

The Louisiana-native beat former top-three player Ivan Ljubicic handily after going through the qualifying rounds, then fell in a fifth-set tiebreaker to the dangerous Sergiy Stakhovsky.

And while he failed to sustain the momentum from that mini-run...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Tennis

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