It was getting to that point where a routine match was about to get real difficult if Andy Roddick didn't do something about it.

He was down a break, two games from dropping the third set and inviting a comeback from a feisty 18-year-old Spanish lefty named Rafael Nadal, who would have been more than happy to accept the offer.

It was a little after 11 o'lock last night, and with his second round U.S. Open match at Arthur Ashe Stadium having reached a turning point, Roddick wanted to be real sure which way it went.

"I really wanted to bear down," Roddick said. "He's a fiery guy. If he would have won that third set, his emotions would have been running high, and who knows what would have happened?"

Instead of confronting that grim possibility, Roddick rallied to win the last four games of the match, breaking Nadal twice to salt away a 6-0, 6-3, 6-4 victory.

It was that kind of day at the U.S. Open, one where most of the seeds got tested to one degree or another and some got pushed out of the tournament altogether, especially on the men's side. No. 7 Juan Carlos Ferrero, No. 8 David Nalbandian, and No. 12 Sebastien Grosjean were all second-round losers. So was Vince Spadea, the No. 23 seed, whose upset loss leaves just two American men in the draw -- Roddick and Andre Agassi.

On the women's side, things went more closely to form. No. 2 Amelie Mauresmo advanced easily to the fourth round. No. 3 Serena Williams and No. 8 Jennifer Capriati had a tougher time of it, but they advanced all the same.

Roddick's path to the third round started well enough. He blitzed through the first set, popping a 152-mph serve -- equal to one of his deliveries in the first round and just one mph slower than the all-time record he set in Indianapolis earlier this summer.

Nadal looked utterly overmatched, more like a nervous qualifier than the top 50 player he is. A combination of the venue (a packed Arthur Ashe Stadium), the setting (a Friday night at the U.S. Open) and the opponent (a fire-serving world No. 2) simply overwhelmed him.

It took Roddick just 19 minutes to win the first set at love, and even he was surprised at how it went.

"If you had told me, 'You're going to win the first set, 6-0,' I would have said, 'You're crazy,'" Roddick said.

Nadal put up more of a fight in the second, holding his serve to get on the board and putting up a more determined resistance. But he still had the look of a Chihuahua trying to take on a Bulldog. At one point, Roddick actually knocked Nadal down with a serve, a 143-mph shot to the body that forced Nadal off his feet.

Roddick got a break in the fifth game, the only break he needed to win the second set.

Then, in the third set, things got a little more interesting. Nadal broke Roddick -- the first time that has happened to Roddick in the tournament -- winning the game on a gorgeous running forehand passing shot.

Then in the third game, Roddick spent as much time getting upset with a let call as he did playing tennis. A ball had fallen out of his pocket on the baseline, but chair umpire Andreas Egli allowed the point to continue until Roddick was lining up an easy forehand winner at net. Egli called the let when Roddick was in his backswing and Roddick "let" him hear it.

"That's just a horrible call," Roddick told Egli. "The point had been going on for three shots and you didn't call it."

Roddick went on to win the game, but kept shaking his head, then kept up a constant harangue during the changeover.

"Well done," Roddick said facetiously. "Good job. ... You guys kill me sometimes."

As Roddick recalled later, "The conversation just went downhill from there."

So was Roddick's chances of winning the third set -- or so it seemed. Then in the eighth game, he broke back, going up love-40 and converting a point later to knot the set at 4-4.

He held the next game to go up 5-4, then broke Nadal again, ending a match he really had no interest in allowing to continue any further.


Copyright 2004 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with permission.