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Mardy Fish Advances to Wimbledon Quarters

Last standing American (and Jew) likely to face Nadal next

by
Marc Tracy
June 27, 2011
Fish in the course of today’s victory.(Michael Regan/Getty Images)
Fish in the course of today’s victory.(Michael Regan/Getty Images)

Earlier today, Mardy Fish defeated Tomas Berdych, who was favored, in straight sets to make only his third Grand Slam quarterfinals ever (he lost in that round at the 2007 Australian Open and the 2008 U.S. Open—both hard-court tournaments, in contrast to the All England Club’s famous, crisply cut lawns). This shouldn’t be entirely shocking: Fish recently passed his longtime friend Andy Roddick as America’s number one; he is ranked ninth in the world, and seeded tenth at Wimbledon. In 2008, he even beat all-time great Roger Federer. But somehow he has yet to appear on The Scroll, and, yup, he’s Jewish. So it’s pretty clear whom we’ll be rooting for from here on out.

In the quarters, Fish will play the winner of a match that, as of press-time, is still going on: The great Spaniard Rafael Nadal, first-ranked and -seeded, is up two sets to one against Argentina’s Juan Martín del Potro. Rafa eased Fish out of his last quarters, at the ’08 Open, in four sets. But Fish was not even seeded at that point. And Rafa has to be awful tired, having run around the Paris clay for the full two weeks last month. Fish plays again Wednesday. Get psyched!

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.