Andy Roddick has vowed to stay rooted to the baseline despite Wimbledon great Pete Sampras lamenting the current dearth of attacking tennis at the All England Club.

The big-hitting American powered into the quarter-finals with a 6-2, 7-5, 7-6 victory over Paul-Henri Mathieu to keep the Stars and Stripes flying on Independence Day.

The Wimbledon third seed bludgeoned the gifted if temperamental Frenchman out of contention on Centre Court, moving to the net on just a couple of occasions.

Sampras, who won seven Wimbledon titles, declared he would be “licking his chops” at the prospect of playing against that style on grass, but Roddick refuses to change his approach.

“I agree that’s the best way for Pete to win. But is it the best way for a lot of guys to win? No,” he said. “Obviously I can’t sit here and question Pete’s opinions on how to play grass court tennis.

“But I don’t know if you can generalise by saying that serve and volley is the best way for everybody to play on grass.”

Roddick extended his winning run of tie-breaks to 18 on his way to dispatching Mathieu, despite looking dead and buried at 5-0 down in the third set decider.

But the Frenchman, who had also choked earlier when serving for the third set, squandered a set point with a pumped-up Roddick showing remarkable composure to peg back the deficit.

“I went behind quickly but Mathieu had to hit two pretty good passing shots to get up,” said Roddick.

“Mathieu doesn’t have a serve where he’s going to hit aces the whole time, so I never felt like I was completely out of it. That being said, you’re obviously not confident when you’re down 5-0 in a breaker. I know my serve can go in bunches, two at a time sometimes.

“So I was just concentrating on trying to get a point each time on his serve.”

The victory keeps Roddick on course for a semi-final showdown with Roger Federer, who has not played for five days, and the 25-year-old Queen’s champion is growing in confidence as the tournament progresses. He faces Richard Gasquet, the Frenchman, in the quarter-finals.

“I could have been a little bit tighter today but overall I think it was my best match,” he said.

“Mathieu was rolling pretty good players before he me - Radek Stepanek is good on grass, David Ferrer is tough any time and he dominated against Ivan Ljubicic. He looked impressive so to get through against him in straight sets was a good thing.”

Roddick’s fourth round tie was scheduled to start on Monday but rain and thunder storms forced it into a third day, a wait the former US Open champion found excruciating.

“There’s no question it’s tough. You’re sitting in the locker room the whole time knowing if it clears you could be on the court in 20 minutes,” he said.

“That’s quite a prospect to carry on for three or four days. Then boredom takes over. We all start getting a little loopy.

“My corner is probably the most annoying corner in the locker room - there’s me, Jimmy Connors and Justin Gimelstob. There’s certainly not a lack of dumb conversation going on between us. Gimel always has something funny or sarcastic to say.”