Roddick Beats Lu in Shanghai First Round at BetLM

Roddick Beats Lu in Shanghai First Round

Updated Oct 10, 2011 9:04 AM ET

SHANGHAI

Andy Rod­dick ral­lied to beat Lu Yen-Hsun of Tai­wan 6–2, 3–6, 6–2 Mon­day in the first round of the Shang­hai Masters.

The 10th-seeded Rod­dick won the first set eas­ily, but Lu picked up his game in the sec­ond, rush­ing the net repeat­edly and hit­ting 15 win­ners to eight for the American.

The for­mer US Open cham­pion then broke Lu twice in the third set to close out the match.

Rod­dick was beaten by Lu in five sets in the fourth round of Wim­ble­don last year, the last time the two play­ers met. But the Tai­wanese player made too many mis­takes Mon­day, com­mit­ting 50 unforced errors, includ­ing seven double-faults.

”He plays so high risk,” Rod­dick said. ”Over­all, I thought it was pretty good, save four games.”

The 29-year-old Rod­dick has strug­gled to regain his form this sea­son, los­ing in the third round at Wim­ble­don and pulling out of the French Open because of injury. His rank­ing has slipped to No. 15.

Last week, he lost in the first round of the China Open in Bei­jing, falling in straight sets to Kevin Ander­son of South Africa in a loss he later called ”unacceptable.”

”It’s been tough. It’s been, I think, the tough­est year I’ve had. I feel like I’ve been start­ing and stop­ping a lot,” Rod­dick said. ”You know, I’m going to prob­a­bly have to adjust how I go about things a lit­tle bit more. Run­ning myself into a wall with work and every­thing else, I don’t know that I can do that with­out get­ting hurt. It’s hap­pened numer­ous times this year. I might have to work smarter from now on.”

Also, Bernard Tomic of Aus­tralia over­came 25 aces from Ander­son to beat the South African 7–6 (5), 6–7 (4), 6–3. Tomic won despite con­vert­ing only one of 12 break points in the match.

”He’s so tough because his serve, he gets his cor­ners and gets you out of the court,” said Tomic, who reached a career-high rank­ing of 49 this week. ”Play­ing a lot of these guys, they serve one style. He serves every serve and serves well. You can’t really get on his serve.”

David Nal­ban­dian of Argentina beat Ernests Gul­bis of Latvia 7–5, 6–4, Grigor Dim­itrov of Bul­garia defeated Marsel Ilhan of Turkey 2–6, 6–1, 6–4, and Albert Mon­tanes of Spain beat Mikhail Kukushkin of Kaza­khstan 6–2, 5–7, 7–6 (5).

The Shang­hai tour­na­ment, the only Mas­ters event on the ATP tour’s autumn Asian swing, has been hit by a num­ber of with­drawals this year. Top-ranked Novak Djokovic pulled out to recover from a back injury and No. 3 Roger Fed­erer is tak­ing a six-week break to rest ”nag­ging injuries.”

Robin Soder­ling, Juan Mar­tin del Potro and Gael Mon­fils have also pulled out.

Andy Mur­ray, win­ner of two tour­na­ments in the past two weeks, and Rafael Nadal, how­ever, are both play­ing this week. Mur­ray won the title in Shang­hai last year, beat­ing Fed­erer in the final.

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