By Tim Kawakami
Mercury News Staff Columnist


Is Andy Roddick somebody you would normally associate with Phil Hellmuth, high-stakes poker, or anything that does not involve teeny-bopper fans, Grand Slam meltdowns and 139 mph serves?

No, frankly, he is not.

Roddick, who won his second consecutive SAP Open by roasting Cyril Saulnier in straight sets at HP Pavilion on Sunday, is the safe tennis star.

He's the nice, talented guy who often does not finish first in the biggest tournaments. The 22-year-old American without noticeable edges.
Maybe he's a little too squeaky clean and too happy to slash his way to the top the way John McEnroe, Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi did before him.

A guy who couldn't bring himself to go all-in against Lleyton Hewitt in a dismaying Australian Open semifinal loss because, well, maybe he didn't have it in him.

But I thought I saw a different Roddick on Sunday, not necessarily when he was firing aces or threading perfect forehands, though there was plenty of that for all of the 50 minutes that the match lasted.

I saw it when Roddick rushed through his post-match interviews because Hellmuth was there and the poker table in the players' lounge -- specially requested by Roddick -- was open for play.

Hanging and bluffing with the famed dark prince of high-stakes poker? That's not the sugary, Teen Beat Roddick; but that's a much more interesting Roddick, if you ask me. Maybe a tougher Roddick.

When Roddick plays like he did Sunday against Saulnier -- only eight unforced errors, total domination from the first point on -- you wonder how he ever loses.

Saulnier was playing in his first ATP tournament final, conceded he was a bit nervous and floated balls directly into Roddick's power zones.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah -- he could push him around a little bit,'' Hellmuth said with a wicked smile. "But that's the same thing in poker: You can push people around with aggressive betting. You can push people around in tennis with aggressive ball-striking.''

And how does Roddick do in poker vs. Hellmuth, then?

"He's scared; he won't play me,'' Roddick joked while Hellmuth, a nine-time poker world champion, stood in the back of the news conference.

Said Hellmuth: "When you play tennis like you did today, you don't have to worry about anything.''

Then they were off to play for the second time in a few days, though apparently not for anything more than Roddick's usual $20 games. At least I hope so. Yevgeny Kafelnikov says he has quit tennis to become a pro poker player, but Roddick isn't ready for that yet.

"I'm a lot more confident hitting the second serve than I am at the poker table right now,'' Roddick said.

Hellmuth, who lives in Palo Alto, came down to watch Roddick beat Thomas Enqvist on Friday because he read that Roddick considered Hellmuth one of his favorite people in sports.

They met and hit it off after the match, went out for dinner, played some poker and looked like old-time card buddies by Sunday afternoon, trading stories and barbs about their respective professional endeavors. And professional tantrums.

"In both, you can go on tilt,'' Hellmuth said, using the poker term for losing your cool under fire. "I saw Andy go a little on tilt Friday night. And I go on tilt for whatever reasons -- something goes wrong, you lose a big hand, the next thing you know, I'm losing chips.''

"I said, 'I thought you were a little on tilt Friday night.' He started laughing. He said, 'Tilt? You should've seen me on Thursday night. ' ''

Roddick said he first dabbled in poker last year with the rest of the U.S. Davis Cup team and was quickly embarrassed by how poorly he played.

Now he organizes card games at tournaments to help kill the time and, you'd have to assume, hone the killer instinct.

"I'm all over the place,'' Roddick said when asked if he's a big bluffer. "There's no need for my poker face. 'Cause you just don't know what's coming anyway and sometimes it's horrible.

"My problem is, you know, in tennis you get to play every point. And that's great. I kind of take that philosophy into poker, and it's not good every time.

"Phil told me, 'You know, it's not Black Jack. You can't play every hand.' ''

Yeah, in poker, sometimes you're supposed to fold. In tennis, folding is a very, very bad thing.

And maybe Roddick will be a little less likely to do it, now that he has gone to Hellmuth and back a few times.