After the final ball bounced past him, Andy Roddick's facial expression was somewhere between dumbfounded and perplexed. Defeat had snuck up behind him, suddenly and dramatically. The man who ended Roddick's Wimbledon sprinted toward the grandstand and unleashed a frantic fist pump. His name was Lu Yen-hsun. His seismic upset, 4-6, 7-6 (3), 7-6 (4), 6-7 (5), 9-7 was in the record books. Lu, who is from Taiwan, became the first Asian man to reach a Grand Slam quarterfinal since 1995. Roddick scolded reporters and stomped off, the final American remaining in men's singles headed home. 'I don't think stunned is the right word,' he said. 'I don't view what happened today as an impossibility.' Even if it seemed that way, if only because at this tournament 12 months ago, Roddick fought into the final and dueled Roger Federer for five thrilling sets. Ever since then, that match, that moment, had defined Roddick. People approached him in coffee shops, at restaurants. They told him where they watched that final and what it meant to them. Tennis fans here love their underdogs, and in Roddick, they found another Goran Ivanisevic, the only other three-time runner-up at Wimbledon in the Open era. All tournament, but especially on Monday, the fans embraced Roddick, implored him, shouted his name between each point in the fifth set. This match took place on Court 2, on the opposite side of the All England Club from the site of last year's final, Centre Court. As it ended, shadows crept across the far edge, a symbolic closing of the curtain on the Americans in men's singles here. Minutes earlier, Sam Querrey fell to Andy Murray in straight sets. Even big John Isner, winner of the longest match in professional tennis history, was already back in New York, getting ready for the 'Late Show with David Letterman.' Both Williams sisters advanced into the quarterfinals, of course, this being Wimbledon and all. The Bryan brothers also remained in the doubles portion of the tournament, as they pursued the career record for most titles. Roddick and Federer, though, had seemed destined for a rematch in the semifinals. Instead, Roddick ended his news conference shortly after it began, telling one reporter 'we're better than those questions.' The match lasted for 4 hours 36 minutes, a marathon by all standards set previous to last week. Roddick graded his play in the first three as 'horrendous, like, really, really badly.' He served well, but did not so much return as fail to. Despite criticizing his own play, Roddick lauded Lu's performance. This despite the fact that Lu had never beaten Roddick. Nor had Lu emerged from the first round in his four previous Wimbledons or five previous Grand Slam tournaments. Roddick said Lu's game was conducive to the surface here, with his low, flat groundstrokes and scrambling, creative shot-making. Little rain so far this tournament, along with the highest temperatures yet on Monday, only made the grass play faster than normal, setting the perfect conditions for the upset. In the fourth set tiebreak, Roddick fell behind, 3-0, and his chances turned toward perilous, even then. But when he rallied to even the set count at two each, even Lu said he felt that Roddick would win. But Roddick said the biggest difference from their previous meetings came courtesy of Lu's serve. That serve held Roddick hostage, particularly in the fifth set. 'He deserved to win more than I did,' Roddick said. 'That's for sure.' After the match ended, Lu sat in his chair on Court 2, staring into space. He said he had been thinking of his father, the man who learned tennis at the same time as his son, who drove his son to tennis lessons and supported his son's dreams. The family sold chickens. Not processed chicken. Live chickens. Lu used to have to run and catch them, and he laughed when he relayed that to reporters. He found himself unsuited to the family business, mainly because of the smell and the hours, from 1 a.m. to 6 a.m., when the chickens could not run because the chickens could not see. In 2000, the year that Lu turned professional, his father died. On Monday, sitting in that chair, after the most important win of his career, he thought about his father and chickens and things that families do for dreams. 'I done it,' he said later. 'I done for my father. I done for myself. I done for all the people support me.' He continued: 'I'm really proud to share this victory with him in the sky,' Lu said. 'I hope he see this match.' When it ended, the men headed off in opposite directions. Lu charmed a gallery of news media members, most of whom had never heard of him on Monday morning. His next opponent will be Novak Djokovic, the third seed, in the quarterfinals. While Lu celebrated, Roddick tried to digest the early exit, as he continued to search for his second elusive Grand Slam title, seven years after he captured his first at the U.S. Open. 'If I want to consider myself a contender for this tournament, I need to win that match,' he said. Where last year Roddick produced an instant classic, this Wimbledon ended, if not in an instant, then far earlier than Roddick, Lu or anybody else imagined. 