The essential arc of Andy Roddick’s life goes one thing like this:
In the future you’re a chirpy, hot-shot teenager with a thunderclap serve, who wears a baseball cap on a tennis court docket earlier than that turns into a factor, after which someday you’re not adequate anymore, as a result of inevitably no person is. In between, you go to the highest of a sport that doesn’t love chirpy youngsters in baseball caps all that a lot.
Then someday you get up and also you’re a soon-to-be center aged man on the finish of his profession, questioning what the remainder of your life is meant to appear like. There must be one thing else moreover 27 holes a day to occupy the mind.
Coach? Commentator? The man who will get paid to point out up and shake arms with some firm’s gross sales pressure, to inform tales about what it was wish to face Roger Federer and all of your worst fears, within the forbearance of additional time within the fifth set of a Wimbledon closing, shadows slanting throughout the grass?
Roddick didn’t have a solution. So what did he do? What got here after all the pieces the itinerant life of professional tennis had taught him, after 15 years of lonely lodge rooms, of too-long layovers in locations he would possibly by no means have chosen to be? “Wasn’t actually motivated to work a lot,” he mentioned.
He disappeared for some time, from the expertise that made him vow to by no means “punt management of my geography to another person once more.”
Then he determined to wing it, thoughtfully.
“I’ve all the time been curious,” he mentioned.
Andy Roddick and Roger Federer’s 2009 Wimbledon closing required 30 video games in its deciding set. (David Ashdown / Getty Pictures)
Roddick is speaking from his storage in North Carolina. It doubles because the set for “Served with Andy Roddick,” the weekly (and generally extra frequent) podcast that the Tennis Channel exhibits on its T2 community. It’s additionally the place he generally beams in from for post-match evaluation. There are many moments when he nonetheless feels like that chirpy teenager within the baseball cap, like when he recounts a man questioning one in all his calls throughout a latest set at an area membership.
“Actually pal? I performed three Wimbledon finals, gained the U.S. Open and spent three months because the world No. 1, and also you assume I’m hooking you on Courtroom 11 within the Carolina ‘burbs?”
Hear slightly extra carefully, and one thing else turns into fairly clear. Someplace alongside the best way throughout the dozen years since he referred to as it quits, Andy Roddick morphed into a totally fledged grown-up, whether or not he likes it or not.
How did that occur? How did that chirpy teenager out of the blue get to this middle-age existence, spouse and children and in-law dinners, sporting the standing of millennial tennis sensible man?
The place does life, his and ours, go?
When Roddick turned a spunky 21-year-old, he went to the cathedral of American tennis in 2003 and got here out with the trophy in his arms and the cap on his head. 21 years on, Roddick, 42, is a dozen years into retirement but youthful than Roger Federer.
No American man has cradled that U.S. Open trophy since, with No. 12, No. 14, and No. 20 seeds, Taylor Fritz, Tommy Paul, and Frances Tiafoe all vying to match Roddick’s achievement in 2024.
Roddick was nonetheless in his 20s when he married Sports activities Illustrated mannequin Brooklyn Decker. Roddick and Decker, who’s now a profitable actor, have two kids: Hank, their 8-year-old son, and Stevie, their 6-year-old daughter. Given what they could possibly be doing, they stay what’s, by all accounts, a fairly regular life near her dad and mom. They collect for dinners on many Sunday evenings.
He has additionally amassed a small fortune constructed round what he described as “probably the most boring enterprise you’ll ever hear about.” It’s a business actual property firm that owns greater than 100 properties. He and a accomplice started to scoop them up on a budget after the monetary meltdown in 2008. Their tenants are firms like Starbucks, Lowe’s, and Dwelling Depot.
One factor he doesn’t do is coach. One factor he does do is keep in common contact with roughly a dozen tour gamers who come to him for recommendation. Typically, it’s simply texts or a cellphone name. Typically, they seem in North Carolina for a day or two of serving assist from one of many masters of crucial shot in tennis. Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula are on this group.
“I’ve by no means been paid for teaching and I by no means will probably be paid for teaching,” he mentioned.
Roddick is a tennis nerd who likes speaking by way of photographs and technique and the psychological challenges of the sport. Don’t even take into consideration asking him to think about heading out on the highway to give attention to one participant.
In the course of the closing years of his profession, there have been some hints that life would possibly go this fashion for Roddick. Just about everybody missed them.
Perhaps it was the ball cap. Perhaps it was that chin-first strategy to the sport, or the more and more seen frustration of getting the three greatest gamers of the trendy period come alongside and hijack his profession. The uncooked ache of these three closing Sunday losses in 5 years to Federer at Wimbledon, plus one other in a U.S. Open closing, might have dulled. But it surely’s all the time there, a thematic reference level that may turn out to be jovial materials for a podcast episode, a callback for the viewers to go: “Hey, I do know that bit!”
He gained the U.S. Open in 2003, the final American man to take action. (Nick Laham / Getty Pictures)
To be a grasp of delusion and magical considering is virtually a requirement for world-class athletes. They need to persuade themselves that they’ll win any match or sport towards anybody on the earth on any day. Roddick may try this — after which he couldn’t.
A drubbing from Novak Djokovic was what broke him. Djokovic deigned to spend simply 54 minutes on beating him 6-2, 6-1 on the All England Membership throughout the 2012 Olympics, on Roddick’s greatest floor. These guys on the prime of the sport had a stage he not possessed, if he ever even did.
Cursed with self-awareness, he awakened in a New York lodge room a month later, in the midst of the U.S. Open. He was feeling slightly unusual. He referred to as Decker, who was out for a stroll, and requested her to come back again to the lodge. He wanted to speak to her about one thing.
When she obtained there, he advised her he can be finished taking part in when the match spat him out. It didn’t matter that he’d gained two of his final 4 tournaments. Didn’t matter that he may have possible survived with a rating someplace between No. 5 and No. 40 for an additional 4 or 5 years. Different statesmen of his period both retired only in the near past or are nonetheless on the market, toiling within the three-figure ranks. Roddick wasn’t going to try this.
Just a few days later, he misplaced within the fourth spherical to Juan Martin Del Potro. The match honored him with a ceremony at its conclusion. And that was that.
“I do know who I’m, and I do know who I’m not,” he mentioned.
It’s a high quality that has turn out to be useful for Roddick, and in a meandering approach, it helped carry him again to New York for this 12 months’s U.S. Open, to simply accept an award for his work with a whole bunch of less-advantaged kids in his hometown of Austin.
They take part in after-school and summer season enrichment packages created by his basis. The packages contain a little bit of sport, however are extra centered on making up the training hole with wealthier kids, who’ve entry to all method of extracurricular actions and summer season camps when they aren’t in class.
Roddick began the inspiration when he was nonetheless a young person and with out a lot thought. Elevate some cash. Give some tennis clinics to youngsters who in all probability wouldn’t be uncovered to the game in any other case. Pat your self on the again.
For a decade, the inspiration was what he described as a “typical athlete nonprofit.” Use your movie star to lift a bunch of cash and get your pals concerned, and switch the cash over to organizations that you just like.
“Elton John would come play,” he mentioned. “That’s not a tough factor to promote.”
Then throughout one in all his closing U.S. Opens, he was having dinner with one in all his oldest buddies, Jeff Lau. Lau is a buddy from their earliest years in junior tennis in Austin, when Roddick was 8 and Lau was 10. Roddick’s tennis obtained him to No. 1 on the earth. Lau’s tennis helped him acquire entry into West Level. After graduating, he served abroad, together with in Iraq.
Andy Roddick serves to Juan Martin del Potro in his final U.S. Open. (Chris Trotman / Getty Pictures for USTA)
Lau finally left the navy and commenced working as an funding banker in New York. He and Roddick would have dinner every time he got here by way of town, particularly throughout the U.S. Open.
At a kind of dinners, Lau began quizzing Roddick in regards to the basis, its mission, its construction, and its plan for survival. He wasn’t impressed.
“You’re in your technique to irrelevance,” Lau advised him. “How lengthy do you assume Elton John goes to come back play for you?”
On the time, Roddick figured he had about three extra years on the tour. He truly had about one. He left the dinner critically irritated at Lau — as a result of he knew Lau was proper.
Roddick’s subsequent thought was to begin a constitution college, like his hero, Andre Agassi, had finished in Las Vegas. Then the good individuals out and in of the federal government of Austin, in addition to a lot of dad and mom, advised him that town didn’t want one other constitution college.
Throughout their analysis, they came across a chunk of data that floored them. Texas generally used its fifth-grade literacy charges to undertaking what number of new jail beds it could want sooner or later. Might they elevate these charges up?
“The largest hole was truly out of college time,” Lau mentioned.
That meant after college, when youngsters whose dad and mom are working a second or third job are residence alone, whereas extra advantaged kids are receiving non-public classes or different extracurricular enrichment. Then come summers, when it’s all too simple for youths to offer again the progress they’ve made within the earlier 10 months.
When Roddick and Lau launched their packages, they needed proof that they had been making a distinction. After 5 years, they noticed what they hoped they’d see.
Greater than 200 Austin youngsters took half on this summer season’s Be taught All of the Time program. In accordance with Roddick’s basis they miss fewer days of college, have fewer disciplinary issues and carry out higher on state exams than their friends.
The seriousness that led to that initiative carries by way of on “Served.” The vitality is all jocular, sitting round naming tennis gamers, reviewing outcomes, and making predictions positive to be mistaken, however as with Roddick the participant, there’s mind contained in the baseball cap. These are the 2 sides to Roddick, who’s critical about his work however not too critical about himself.
The Roddick that Roddick presents throughout the present would possibly simply be confused with some random, fairly respectable middle-aged membership participant, who possibly rose to No. 700 on the earth and took residence a few Challenger titles. Somewhat than a man who was world No. 1, and gained just a few Challenger Tour occasions and a U.S. Open.
There’s virtually all the time some second in each episode the place he places the Huge Three in a single class after which lumps himself with everybody else, and that features you, with a reference to his personal sport that’s one thing alongside the likes of, “schlubs like us.”
Andy Roddick’s on-court manner belied the seriousness of his ideas about tennis. (Ian Walton / Getty Pictures)
He’s additionally not afraid to be on the receiving finish of absolutely anything. Lindsay Davenport, a longtime pal who’s a former world No. 1 and the present Billie Jean King Cup coach for the U.S., referred to as him out for mocking U.S. Open quarterfinalist Emma Navarro. Navarro had needed to carry out one thing, forward of her inaugural look on the nationwide staff. She selected to rap.
It wasn’t a terrific efficiency. Then once more, Navarro is a tennis participant, not a hip-hop artist, and Davenport didn’t like the best way Roddick had been, in her view, demeaning to a good-hearted younger lady who was taking part in together with a joke. It wasn’t a lot his phrases however his tone.
“You didn’t need to be such a…” she mentioned. You possibly can end the sentence. The phrase rhymes with “stick.”
Lulled by all of the irreverence, the gorgeous necessary tennis nuggets can rattle previous at Roddick’s excited clip, particularly on the subject of serving, his best ability.
He was one of many first to note that Alexander Zverev had lowered his toss by a few foot, letting him crack the ball as by no means earlier than. The adjustment has taken him to No. 2 on the earth.
Gauff’s second-serve points? She in all probability needs to maneuver her toss again a bit, he defined in fairly easy phrases. She’s making an attempt to go too far ahead into the court docket, and the additional ahead you go, the more durable it’s to manage the serve.
Gauff adopted his recommendation. After her struggles at this 12 months’s U.S. Open along with her serve, she might properly search extra of it.
GO DEEPER
‘They gradual issues down of their minds’: How tennis gamers return 130mph serves
Carlos Alcaraz’s serve, having been good however sort of unthreatening in comparison with nearly all the pieces else he does, turned borderline lethal at Wimbledon. Novak Djokovic couldn’t imagine what was skidding and leaping off the grass within the closing. Roddick noticed why. As a substitute of elevating his arms in a traditional straight V-shape, Alcaraz was rotating his again shoulder extra and coming across the ball. It was hitting the court docket and taking off in a extra dramatic approach. It in all probability felt quite a bit heavier when it hit Djokovic’s strings.
Drop any of these nuggets at your subsequent tennis barbecue. Your buddies will probably be impressed.
He additionally took time to disclose his latest brush with pores and skin most cancers (he’s OK, however put on sunscreen, please) and he was one of many extra sober voices after information broke that Jannik Sinner had examined optimistic for a banned anabolic steroid. No, he mentioned, it wasn’t possible a sign that sustained doping, exterior of these two failed exams, was part of Sinner’s success. He defined the randomness of testing, the knocks on the door. He even defined it to Nick Kyrgios, who has his personal “Good Hassle” media automobile and no worry of getting an opinion.
A lot of individuals in tennis have these ideas. Gamers, followers, social media creators, tennis journalists. Roddick’s variations of those ideas minimize by way of, and it isn’t all to do with the cachet of being a former world No. 1, or taking Federer to an edge over which he wouldn’t be pushed.
“It’s one factor to have the ability to see the sport and have intelligent ideas,” mentioned Bob Wiley, a prime programmer at The Tennis Channel. “It’s one other to have the ability to categorical your self succinctly so individuals can perceive it.”
The place all of this leads, not even Roddick is aware of, as if any of us ever do. For the time being, although, it’s a fairly superbly boring grown-up existence.
“I simply actually like being residence,” he mentioned.
(High pictures: Cynthia Lum, WireImage; Tim Clayton, Corbis / Getty Pictures; Design: Eamonn Dalton for The Athletic)