U.S. out of Davis cup as Roddick loses marathon

America was knocked out of the Davis cup, on Sunday, in Moscow as Hard-hitting Andy Roddick went down swinging in his match against Dmitry Tursunov of Russia. America no longer has Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi because of whom the nation once ruled this competition.

Dmitry Tursunov put Russia into the Davis Cup final after holding off Andy Roddick, 6-3, 6-4, 5-7, 3-6, 17-15. Tursunav gave his country an incontrovertible 3-1 lead over the United States. The score was made 3-2 by James Blake who won 7-5, 7-6 over Marat Safin in the last singles match on Sunday.

Roddick went down 6-3, 6-4 in the first two sets, but stormed back to take the third and fourth sets 7-5, 6-3 to set up a fifth set in the match which he lost after much struggle. The match took nearly five hours to complete. Roddick and Tursunov played a total of 72 games, tying a record for the most in a World Group match since the tiebreaker was introduced in 1989.

"You feel like you let your teammates down and your country down," Roddick said. "It's not an easy thing, especially to fight back all that way and to lose. It's tough."

"When you're coming up on the five-hour mark, I promise you, neither of us is feeling fresh," the American continued. "Especially when you add in the tension and nervousness of the Davis Cup. I think I could just as easily have won as lost."

U.S. captain Patrick McEnroe acknowledged that the Americans were a stronger team in the days of Sampras and Agassi. "Clearly we don't have that kind of group," he said but also praised Roddick’s effort.

With that victory over U.S., Russia will now play host to Argentina in December in their first Davis Cup final since 2002, when they beated France for their only Davis cup title.