You go into a match with Ivo Karlovic assuming you’re not going to break his serve. Or, in the words of Andy Roddick, “getting down an early break against Karlovic is a recipe for disaster.” Fortunately for Roddick, he had never before dropped a service game to the Croat, a point raised he raised last evening in anticipation of the match and worried would jinx him today.

It well may have. Karlovic broke Roddick early in the first set and again to start off the second. “Absolutely not the way you want to go about managing that match. I consider myself fortunate to be able to get out of it one time much less two times,” said the number one seeded American. Roddick broke back twice and just barely eked out a two-set, two-tiebreak victory in the third of four Legg Mason Tennis Classic quarterfinals played in Rock Creek Park on Friday.