Tennis-Wimbledon-Roddick enjoys studying the vital stats

By Sonia Oxley

LONDON, June 27 (Reuters) - Andy Roddick is a man who loves to check out vital statistics -- and that has nothing to do with his swimwear model wife.

The American was poring over a sheet of stats relating to his 7-6 7-6 4-6 6-3 victory over Austrian Juergen Melzer in the Wimbledon third round on Saturday when he walked into his news conference and was asked to explain what he looked for.

"First serve percentage is big for me. Points won receiving second serves is big for me. And the other one is just feeding my curiosity," the sixth seed said.

"(The stat sheet) rarely lies. I mean, I can normally guess. As far as first serve percentage, I can normally guess (within) two or three percent. You kind of get a feel for it."

The key numbers against the Austrian 26th seed would have made pleasant reading -- Roddick got got 72 percent of his first serves in and fired 33 aces at the left-hander.

He was frustrated not to have found a way to break Melzer in the first two sets, when games went with serve, but was pleased with the way he handled the tiebreaks.

"I think my career record in breakers is pretty good. I feel comfortable obviously, being able to win cheap points under tense situations with my serve helps," said the 26-year-old, who married model Brooklyn Decker earlier this year.

It was Melzer who broke first, going up 3-2 in the third. He then won three set points with a beautiful lob, sealing the set with a crosscourt forehand that Roddick did not even move for.