Andy Roddick’s appearance Thursday at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center was a return to the site of his greatest tennis triumph. Roddick won the US Open in 2003, when he was 21 years old. As Roddick told fans during a US Open Fan Week Q&A session, winning the title wasn’t his first major victory in Flushing Meadows.
Roddick’s US Open victory in 2003 helped him end that year ranked No. 1 in the world—making him the youngest American to reach No. 1 since the ranking system began in 1973. But it was actually 12 years before that when he played his first, um, “match” against a ranked opponent.
Roddick, who spoke to fans before a Thursday afternoon Legends Match against James Blake, explained that he was just 9 years old when he first came to the Open… and snuck into the players’ lounge in Arthur Ashe Stadium.
“Security is a little more intense these days,” said Roddick, now 36. He explained that he went through the garbage exit.
“I’m not going to encourage you to do it,” he told the crowd, “but it was awesome.”
The 9-year-old Roddick was starry eyed, standing in the players’ lounge holding his handheld video game that went with him everywhere at the time.
“So then a guy named Pete Sampras came up to me,” he recalled. “I kinda just stood there, didn’t want to mess anything up. So I played video games with Pete Sampras when I was 9.”
Sampras was the defending US Open champ at the time, having defeated Andre Agassi in 1990 for the first of his five US Open titles. Sampras was only 20 in 2001, so it’s not unusual to think he had some video-game chops of his own.
How did Roddick do against the defending US Open champ?
“In my mind,” said Roddick, “I won.”
