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American Andy Roddick says he is proud of pushing Croatian’s Marin Cilic all the way in their Australian Open quarter-final despite battling a shoulder injury.
Roddick received treatment to his right shoulder early in the second set, and said afterwards he also started feeling numbness in his fingers.
Even so, he was able to fight back from two sets down to take the quarter-final into a fifth set, before Cilic prevailed 7-6 (7-4) 6-3 3-6 2-6 6-3.
Roddick said once the trainer allayed his initial concerns that he might be causing himself lasting damage, he had been determined to give the contest everything.
“I asked Paul Ness, the trainer – obviously anytime there’s something with an arm, a shoulder, numbness with your fingers, I’m going to be a little bit concerned,” he said.
“My arm is pretty much my livelihood.
“I asked him if there was any risk involved with going further. He said he didn’t think so.
“So from that point it was just a matter of just go.”
Roddick said the injury affected his serve, as well as his groundstrokes.
“I was having trouble feeling to the touch. You know, at that point I didn’t know how much I was going to be (able to continue),” he said.
“Once (Ness) said there was no risk, I knew I wasn’t going to stop, but I didn’t know what I was going to be able to come up with.
“To be able to push it and have a shot, I thought it was a pretty good effort.”
He said he had first felt pain during his previous match, then aggravated the injury in the warm-up against Cilic.
“I was pretty numb in the bottom two fingers. I could still hit it pretty hard, I was just having trouble controlling it,” he said.
He said the early prognosis was that there were not expected to be any long-term problems.
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