Roddick puts foot wrong, then throws tantrum

Andy Roddick boiled over in the heat of Flushing Meadows on Wednesday night.

The ninth seed at the US Open tennis championships crashed out in the second round after a bad-tempered row with a line judge.

On a day when temperatures again soared into the high 30s, causing women's 10th seed Victoria Azarenka to collapse on court, Roddick lost his cool.

Roddick was beaten 3-6 7-5 6-3 7-6 (4) by Janko Tipsarevic, a Serb who is ranked 44th in the world, wears monstrously large glasses, a thick black headband and has a Fyodor Dostoyevsky quote tattooed on his arm in Japanese.

The New York Daily News described Tipsarevic as looking more like a mad scientist, but on Wednesday night, it was Roddick who was mad.

Roddick, whose only grand slam title came at the US Open as a 21-year-old in 2003, kicked up a fuss when he was foot-faulted at 5-2 down in the third set. He berated the line judge for telling him his right foot was at fault.

"Not once in my entire career has my right foot gone ahead of my left foot," Roddick shouted at her.

"Why don't you get some umpires that know what they're doing?"

The call actually was right, but it was the line judge's explanation that was wrong. Roddick hopped forward and put his left foot on the line as he served.

Roddick saved three set points from 0-40, but the comeback was shortlived. Tipsarevic closed out the set in his next service game then completed victory by winning a fourth-set tiebreaker 7-4.

Tipsarevic said he did not blame Roddick for being upset.

"But I feel he was trying to do something to change the match, to get the crowd involved or whatever," said Tipsarevic.

If that was Roddick's motivation, it also backfired, the Arthur Ashe stadium crowd booing their native son.

Roddick was more gracious when the players met at the net to shake hands at the end, Tipsarevic said, and the American had urged him to go deep in the tournament.

"He said, 'well done, man, you played great' ... He said, 'if you lose early, I'm going to freakin' kill you'."

• Andy Murray sent an ominous warning to his US Open rivals when he breezed through his first match, beating Slovakia's Lukas Lacko 6-3 6-2 6-2.

In the women's draw, former champions Kim Clijsters and Venus Williams dazzled their opponents and charmed the crowds after Azarenka fainted on court.

Clijsters beat Australian qualifier Sally Peers 6-2 6-1 in less than an hour. Williams won 7-6 6-3 over Canada's Rebecca Marino,.

Azarenka, in a black dress and playing when temperatures were at their hottest, was rushed to hospital after collapsing in a heap at the baseline during her second-round match against Argentina's Gisela Dulko.

She had succumbed to scorching heat at last year's Australian Open and there were fears she had been a victim of the extreme temperatures.

She later revealed that she had been diagnosed with a mild concussion and her crumble was a delayed reaction to a fall suffered earlier in the gym while warming up.