Emotions will be put on hold

WIMBLEDON/ Men's singles: Johnny Watterson looks forward to the men's quarter-finals, which have thrown up an intriguing clash between Andy Roddick and Sjeng Schalken.

Andy Roddick said last week when he knocked his Davis Cup partner Taylor Dent out of the competition in the third round that affairs of the heart didn't enter the Grand Slam equation. Winning, said the American number two seed, was "just business" and something that everyone on the tour understood. You arrive on court and, out of respect to your opponent, you are duty bound to spill your guts in trying to win the match.

In his fractured way Roddick was talking about the essence of sport. Today the 21-year-old is faced with something more complex than a Davis Cup partner in his quarter-final match against Holland's Sjeng Schalken and when he looks over the net on the show court, Roddick's mind may well drift back to May of this year when he woke up in the early hours of the morning in his sixth-floor suite in the Parco Dei Princei Hotel in Rome.

In the blind darkness, Roddick immediately understood that all was not well but through the fug of sleep thought he smelt the smoke from a barbecue. He jumped out of bed and realised that the entire floor was suffocating in smoke. No alarm had gone off. No sprinkler system had kicked in.

Roddick ran out to his large balcony and noticed that on the floor above him people were scrambling around, unable to get down. The ladders on the Italian fire fighters could reach only to the sixth floor, not to the seventh. Among the group of people Roddick recognised a couple. It was Schalken and his wife, Ricky.

The player has since played down his role in assisting the trapped people above him. While three people died in the fire as the hotel was virtually burned down, all of the group on the balcony, with the player's help, ended up on his balcony and got out of the building safely. One American tourist died as he tried to climb down from his room using sheets tied together, while a Canadian couple also perished in the gutted fourth floor. Roddick was one of the last out of the hotel.

Even under the crushing pressure of Wimbledon, Roddick acknowledges that a bond has been established between himself and Schalken. Last week before they knew they would meet in the quarter-final, they practised together in the courts at Aorangi Park.

"Yeah, I think there is (a bond)," said Roddick. "I mean any time you share an experience that's pretty traumatic with someone, there's always something there. I've been asked that question this week. I don't know what the bond is but there is something a little different there. That's kind of neat.

"It rattled me for a week," he continued. "Rome was probably the first time in my life I was on the court and couldn't care less if I won or lost. I wanted to go home and I wanted to see my family.

"I know it's weird how things work. Obviously Sjeng and I knew we'd play each other again. But you know, like I tried to say the other day, once you get on the court, you try to forget about it. I'm sure we'll both be focused on winning a Wimbledon quarter-final."

For higher-octane stuff, Swiss champion Roger Federer's meeting with Lleyton Hewitt is a must see, the Australian having picked up his game this year and Federer once again majestically sweeping to this point without once dropping his serve on the grass.

Tim Henman will probably turn emotions through the wringer once again against Croatian Mario Ancic, with the final match pitching Frenchman Sebastein Grosjean against the youngest player remaining German 20-year-old, Florian Mayer.