Some fantasies have a specific shape. Mine had a yellow tennis ball traveling at 120 miles per hour.
I grew up watching the Holy Trinity of my tennis childhood -Roger Federer , Lleyton, and Andy. Federer was perfection. Hewitt was heart. But Roddick? Roddick was the reason I picked up a racket. That serve – the coiled wind-up, the explosive release, the sound it made hitting the court – was unlike anything I’d ever seen. It felt like controlled violence. It felt like art.
I watched Andy lose to Roger in one of the most heartbreaking Wimbledon finals ever played, at a sports bar, nursing perhaps by 10th beer and willing the scoreboard to change. I watched him dismantle Hewitt many times which always left me torn, because Lleyton was my childhood idol and I loved Andy but my loyalty had to go somewhere. I cheered both. I grieved both. That’s what great rivalries do to you.
Meeting him was always a dream. Facing his serve was the fantasy inside the dream – the kind you don’t say out loud because it sounds slightly unhinged.
Newport, Rhode Island. 2016.
I was at the International Tennis Hall of Fame for a tennis clinic with Andy Roddick. Grass courts. Summer heat. There was just one complication. Forty days earlier I’d had knee surgery.
Forty days. I had rehabbed with a single-mindedness that my physiotherapist found alarming and I found completely reasonable. Because if there was any chance – any chance at all – of hitting a few balls on a grass court with Andy Roddick, I was going to be upright and moving when it happened.
We hit a few shots. It was everything.
Then I asked him. Could he serve a few to me?
He looked at me – genuinely concerned – and said no. “I could hurt you.”
That evening I met Andy and James Blake at a dinner event. I took a picture and jokes to Andy about the serves.
A few years later.
We invited Andy to speak at our conference. He was phenomenal on stage alongside Monica Seles – sharp, funny, honest in the way only retired champions can afford to be. Afterwards we spoke at length. I showed him the photographs from Newport 2016. I think he remembered.
Newport, Rhode Island. 2024.
Eight years after that first clinic. Andy was back, doing another session with our group. Same grass courts. Same summer heat. Same Hall of Fame overlooking everything.
At the end of the clinic, I waited. And then I asked again.
He was something of an acquaintance now. So I asked him if he’d serve a few to me.
He looked at me for a moment. Then he said: “Okay. Let’s have it. Just a few – this shoulder can only take so much.”
I walked to the far end of the grass court. And then I kept walking. I went as far back as I could possibly go, well behind the baseline, as if the extra few feet might buy me something. A fraction of a second.
I was aware of Todd Martin standing behind me, watching with what I can only describe as informed curiosity – the look of a man who knows exactly what’s coming and is quietly grateful it isn’t coming at him.
First serve. Down the middle. I didn’t move. Not a muscle. The ball was past me before the thought of moving had even formed.
Second serve. I got my forehand on it. Shanked it somewhere into the Rhode Island afternoon.
Third serve. I made contact – backhand, slice, block, some combination of the three, I genuinely cannot tell you which. My body reacted before my brain could interfere.
Fourth serve. I got my forehand through the ball and drove it cross-court, nice and deep. A real shot. An actual tennis shot.
Andy stepped in and put it away down the line. Clinical. Effortless. Of course.
I thanked him. He laughed and said his serve had slowed down considerably,
I felt tremendous.
Same side of the net.