WIMBLEDON, England — Some 1,760 days later, Sam Querrey banged a 131-mph serve up the middle Monday, and the linesman dodged it for his own personal safety and then called it wide, whereupon Querrey cheerily challenged the call. The long, barren road neared its end. No American male had reached a tennis Grand Slam quarterfinal since Friday, Sept. 9, 2011, when, at the U.S. Open, Rafael Nadal routed Andy Roddick and Andy Murray shooed John Isner.
As Querrey waited briefly for the Hawk-Eye technology to rule on his challenge, another long, hard road neared its end. Since he arrived in bright lights at the 2006 U.S. Open and won a round at age 18, all the way through his gargantuan upset of No. 1 Novak Djokovic on Saturday, the Californian had tried at 37 Grand Slam tournaments, exiting in the gruel of three fourth rounds, nine third rounds, eight second rounds and 17 first rounds.
So when the video screen showed a simulation of a ball catching the outer edge of the line, breakthroughs had come. Not only was Querrey a first-time quarterfinalist at 28, and not only did the United States have a male quarterfinalist again, but in beating veteran Nicolas Mahut in the Wimbledon fourth round, 6-4, 7-6 (7-5), 6-4, Querrey had mastered a hard human art.
He had come off a big high and kept his feet grounded.
He had pushed U.S. men’s tennis back to familiar old climes after it couldn’t grab any of the 144 quarterfinal spots in the previous 18 Grand Slams, with 19 nations having gotten at least one and Spain having gotten 27. He had become the breakthrough story of Monday even on a day when Venus Williams, 36, reached her first Wimbledon quarterfinal since age 30 with an impressive two-set passage through Carla Suarez-Navarro, and Serena Williams, the defending champion, played a divine form of the game in a 20-minute second set of her 7-5, 6-0 win over fellow veteran Svetlana Kuznetsova. He had joined the royal Williamses in advancing on a day when Americans Madison Keys, Coco Vandeweghe and Steve Johnson exited, the last of those in a straight-set flurry of Roger Federer-ian beauty.
The tennis slur “favorable draw” will never haunt the recollections of Querrey’s first major quarterfinal. That draw went right through a third round against Djokovic, a person with realistic designs upon becoming the best player ever. It was a four-set outcome Querrey’s next opponent, the Canadian and No. 7-ranked Milos Raonic, called “incredible to see.” Now it has gone through a fourth-round trap.
Today was definitely not an easy match by any means for him, especially coming back after that huge upset, all that came with that,” Raonic said. “He stepped up today against a difficult opponent on grass who’s been playing well, many years on grass, and especially was playing this year well.”
Asked whether there’s a philosophy for navigating such puzzles, Querrey said, “I’m not really sure.”
Asked whether he had thought, post-Djokovic, about how high he might go here, he said, “Not at all.”
Asked how the towering win might boost his self-perception, he said, “You know, it wasn’t a final of a Slam or anything like that. It’s something that’s exciting. I’ll always have it with me.”
When he took it with him to Court No. 18, the smallish court where spectators can watch both from courtside bleachers and from a strand of a hill above, he had to make sure it didn’t get too heavy.
He knew some things.
“I knew in my mind it was going to be a tough match, even though on paper to the outsider, ‘Oh, he beat Novak, this is going to be an easy one,’ ” Querrey said.
And: “If I didn’t win, there would have been a lot of, ‘Wow, it was kind of a fluky match against Novak because you didn’t back it up.’ ”
He concluded, “I feel like I did a really good job of putting my head down and playing really well today.”
It had helped, Querrey said, that he played for “my first quarterfinal,” which served as “another carrot on the line for me to play for.” Then he kept his experienced head and lost his considerable serve only once against Mahut. Then he blasted one last serve, and it was “a little weird,” he said, because of the challenge. He had to wait about 15 seconds more.
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