Does Roddick feel a bit sorry for himself, given that he happened to be born almost exactly a year after the man who may very well go down as the greatest tennis player in history?

“No,” he said. “I get to play in atmospheres like that.”

Well, does Roddick think he can beat Federer?

“Yeah,” he said. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be out here.”

He looked good early. In the match’s fourth game, Roddick turned it up a notch, pounding an ace at 140 mph, a service winner at 142 mph and delivering another serve at 146 mph. Remarkably, Federer put that last one in play, an indication of just how talented a returner he is.

Roddick serve-and-volleyed at times, even on a second serve, and covered the net well, early, winning the point on six of his first eight trips forward.

All the while, his coach, five-time U.S. Open winner Jimmy Connors, sat in the front row of a guest box in a jacket and blue tie, occasionally offering encouraging yells or claps, at other times gnawing on his fingernails.

Roddick got plenty of support from a partisan sellout crowd of 23,733, a celebrity-specked audience that included Andre Agassi, the eight-time major champion who returned to the scene for the first time since retiring after last year’s Open.

The electricity on this night, and the two tiebreakers, brought back memories of Agassi’s four-tiebreaker quarterfinal loss to Sampras in the 2001 Open. Neither player lost serve once that night.

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Agassi sat in the TV booth for USA Network, offering insights. When Roddick stared down Federer and bellowed after a 138 mph ace to get to 4-4 in the first set, Agassi said: “There’s a fine line between getting pumped up, and waking a sleeping giant, I assure you.”

Sure enough, when it mattered the most, Federer was wide awake.

“I know that I have a big repertoire of shots and things I can choose from,” Federer said. “I’m happy the way I’m maintaining this great ability of coming up with the important wins when I have to. I’m at my best always at the Slams.”

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