One day, presumably, Wimbledon will be different for Andy Roddick. One day, he will hold up the championship trophy, the roars will be for him, and the haunting emptiness for someone else.

One day, he’ll win. He has to, if the gods of tennis have any sense of decency and justice. They owe him a happy ending.
Sunday should earn him that.
—
There sat Roddick on our television screens. Head down, heart broken, no further words necessary from the analysts. We all know pure, unadulterated pain when we see it.
Can’t tell a lob shot from a flu shot? Doesn’t matter. This is not about tennis, this is about anguish.
What had he accomplished, he would be asked at his press conference, after helping create an unforgettable Sunday at Wimbledon?
“I lost.”
Epics always feel more like epics when you win.
There stood Roddick on our television screens, gazing onto space, exhausting defeat darkening his eyes.
He had been out there four hours and 16 minutes, chasing Roger Federer from the afternoon light Sunday into the early evening shadows. In America, NBC promotes the men’s championship as breakfast at Wimbledon. Nobody said anything about lunch.
The aces and games and hours marched past. Nobody blinked. It became a heavyweight fight with no final bell, a pitcher’s duel in the 25th inning with the fastballs still hitting 96, a basketball marathon in its seventh overtime, since someone was always making a clutch 3-pointer to tie.
Tennis legends from Sampras to Borg to Laver were seated in a majestic row, waiting to congratulate Federer on his record-setting 15th major. Roddick made them wait.
“Looking back it seems like a lot,” Roddick said afterward of a tennis match that turned into a “Gone with the Wind” showing. “But each time it was just a point, and then another one, and then another one. I guess it added up after awhile.”
Would it ever end? Should it ever end?
The two wives seated in the same box, under constant camera scrutiny, probably wondered the same thing. (Don’t you just love how Wimbledon, assuming chivalry, puts one player camp in the row right behind the other? Imagine mixing Red Sox and Yankee families in the same box for Game 7 of an ALCS. Or not.).
The fifth set score sounded like it came out of a Pittsburgh Steelers-Baltimore Ravens game. Tennis matches are not supposed to be lost 16-14. But this one was.
There clapped Andy Roddick on our television screens, graciously congratulating the giant who would not be denied, when he was probably frustrated enough to take a bite out of a tennis ball.
Federer said something in his championship interview about knowing what it was like to lose a magical Wimbledon final, since he had done that just 12 months ago to Rafael Nadal.
Fine. But he’s also now won six times. Roddick has won none. Coming close disappoints one but haunts the other.
“I just keep going,” Roddick said of his Wimbledon quest. “There’s not another option.”
—
The question is common to any loser of an instant classic - how long the hurt of not winning will obscure how he played the game.
“I don’t know,” Roddick said. “I’m not a psychic. I’m a tennis player.”
It is rare that defeat enriches a man’s standing. Second places - no matter how honorable - seldom do much for anyone who would be a champion. But for those who judge by grit and will, Roddick ended Sunday a more impressive athlete than when it began.
He has lost to Federer before. Often. But never quite like this, making history so hard, and thus more memorable. Nobody should have appreciated Andy Roddick Sunday more than the man who needed 50 aces, 107 winners and 77 games to beat him.