Andy Roddick always had a self-deprecating streak, but he seems to have become even humbler in retirement.
In 2013, he attended a gala event in New York to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the ATP’s computer ranking system. Surrounded by fellow former No. 1 players like Roger Federer, Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe and Rafael Nadal, Roddick landed the most memorable line of the evening.
“It’s an honor to be the worst player in this room.”
Four years later, Roddick finds himself in rarefied tennis company again, to be inducted Saturday as a new member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I. Despite making it in on the first ballot, the 35-year-old Roddick, who hung up his racquets in the 2012, is just happy to be invited to the party.
“I’ll be in the room,” he said, as if that’s all he can ask. “When you think of yourself in there with someone like Rod Laver, you feel the gravity of it.”
“I can’t compare myself with guys like that,” Roddick said, “but just to have a commonality with your heroes is a great feeling.”
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Is Roddick being a little too humble? It’s true that his accomplishments – one major, at the 2003 US Open; 13 weeks at No. 1; 32 tour titles – can’t compare with Laver’s or Federer’s. But according to his former coach Brad Gilbert, Roddick’s record looks more laudable than it might have five years ago.
“At the time he started, he was measured against the Agassis, the Samprases, the McEnroes, the Connorses,” Gilbert said of Roddick’s American predecessors. “Now you look back, and Andy’s the last American guy to win a Slam, and he was the last one to make the semis of one before Sam [Querrey, at Wimbledon].”
Roddick, in Gilbert’s eyes, kept the U.S. flag flying during a decade of rapid globalization in tennis. And except for one person – Federer, who beat him in four major finals – it would have flown much higher.
When Roddick himself looks back, it’s his consistency and commitment to his country that give him the most satisfaction.
“I’m proud of having stayed there for that long,” Roddick said of his nine straight seasons in the Top 10. “I didn’t have a lot of peaks and valleys. And I’m happy I always answered the call for U.S. tennis.”
That commitment led to the country’s last Davis Cup title, in 2007, a victory that team captain Patrick McEnroe said wouldn’t have happened without Roddick’s leadership.
“He was the ultimate team guy,” McEnroe said. “He reveled in the atmosphere.”
But what impressed McEnroe most wasn’t how Roddick won for the U.S., but how he competed when he lost.
“He always put it all on the line,” McEnroe said, “even when he knew he was going to lose. I really gained respect for how he played when we were on the road, when things were against us.”
And maybe that’s how Roddick should be remembered as he enters the Hall of Fame. Not for the titles he won, but for the way he competed during one of the greatest eras the men’s game has known. When the best of that era – Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic – finally join Roddick in Newport, they can be proud to be in the room with him.
