Roddick Remains King of Queen's With Third Consecutive Stella Artois Title

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Andy Roddick captured his third Stella Artois Championship in as many years after defeating Ivo Karlovic 7-6(7), 7-6(4) in the final at The Queen's Club.

Roddick, the two-time defending champion, needed just 1 hour, 20 minutes to put his name alongside John McEnroe (1979-81) and Lleyton Hewitt (2000-02) as the only players to win three consecutive titles.

"It feels good," said Roddick. "I never would have predicted it three years ago, that's for sure. But I'm happy.
"The fact that I've played a couple serve-and-volleyers, I've played a couple guys who are a little craftier, some guys who are a little bit in between. So I think it's good that I've seen a lot of different looks this week."

With the victory, the American also extended his winning streak at the tournament to 15. Roddick's only loss at The Queen's Club came against Mikhail Youzhny in 2001. Roddick is now 31-7 on the ATP circuit this year and moves up to sixth position in the INDESIT ATP 2005 Race.

The No. 2 seed fired 10 aces and did not face a break point against Karlovic, the 6'10' Croatian who was playing in his first career ATP final.

Roddick won the first seven points of the match and had the Croatian at 0-40 in his opening service game, but Karlovic settled down to hold and eventually forced a tie-break.

Karlovic came into the final having played 20 matches and 20 tie-breaks this year (10-10), and had won all five this week. However, Roddick had an 11-9 tie-break record in 2005 coming into the match, and it was the American who came out on top, clinching the opener on his fifth set point.

The second set also went to a tie-break, with Roddick leading 5-1. Karlovic saved one match point, but despite firing 16 aces of his own throughout the match, it was not enough to stop Roddick clinching the 18th title of his career with a service winner.

Roddick is now just one title away from joining McEnroe and Boris Becker as the only four-time champions at the Stella Artois Championships.

En route to the final, the American defeated former champion Mark Philippoussis, Karol Beck, two-time runner-up Sebastien Grosjean and fourth seed Radek Stepanek.

Meanwhile, Karlovic enjoyed the biggest week of his career with victories over Michal Mertinak, No. 8 seed Fernando Gonzalez, Tomas Zib, top seed and three-time champion Lleyton Hewitt and sixth seed Thomas Johansson. He became the first Croat to reach the Stella Artois final since Goran Ivanisevic lost to Philippoussis in 1997.

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