Lacoste’s tennis-specific heritage was especially appealing to Roddick, who considered it his mission to make the game more mainstream in the US, just as his idols once had. “These guys—Connors, McEnroe, Chang, Courier, Andre, Pete. They were everything to me. And so it’s like, ‘It’s on you. Don’t fuck up what they built.’ If I couldn’t replace their tennis, I could somehow keep people in the building.”
Roddick’s celebrity was turbocharged when he started dating singer and actress Mandy Moore, their nearly two-year relationship unfolding amid the early aughts gossip-site boom. In a 2004 story in Teen Vogue, Moore described how she and Roddick were often treated by the paparazzi: “He was in town and we were having dinner with friends, and some guy chased us clear out of the restaurant. We sat home for the rest of his stay.”
Jeff Lau, who met Roddick when they were kids in Austin and remains a close friend, recalls the frenzy of that time: “Entourage is fun to watch because I’ve been in the black car when girls were trying to pry their way in. There were some of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen who were throwing themselves at him. And he was unaffected.”
One difference between Roddick’s life and Entourage: His Turtle was a mid-60s London cabbie. Not only did Roddick continue to hire Stephen Little during grass court season; he rented a bigger house at Wimbledon so that Little could have a bedroom, got him a Wimbledon grounds pass, and hired his son, Paul, to work for him and Decker in America.
Such a down-to-earth mentality ensured Roddick was never at risk of losing himself to celebrity and all its temptations—that and the work ethic he inherited from his father. “The work was non-negotiable,” he says. “I never viewed myself on the same level ability-wise as a Roger, so I always had this insecurity where if it got away from me…”
Roger. Sooner or later, our conversation always circles back to Roger.
“I love Roger,” Roddick says. “I do. I love him as a human being.” But after so many losses to Federer—21 in 24 matches—Roddick admits that he developed an insecurity. “I didn’t show up at the track every morning like, ‘Fuck Roger!’” he says. “To me it was like the sky. You’re not always looking at it, but you know it’s there.”
I had long seen this as the central drama of Roddick’s story—the torment of being so thwarted by timing and circumstance. You’re Christopher Marlowe, you’re feeling pretty good, and then here comes this Shakespeare guy. “Surely he would have had at least five majors if he played a few years earlier,” says Jim Courier.
But Roddick’s friend Jeff Lau sees it differently: “It’s sad that people view him as being at the wrong time in the tennis cycle. He wouldn’t have had it any other way.”
Lau is referring to Roddick’s infamous competitiveness. Everyone who knows Roddick has a story. Dean Goldfine, who succeeded Gilbert as Roddick’s coach in 2005, remembers their cutthroat Scrabble games. “He memorized, like, every three-letter word that had z in it,” Goldfine says. “It got to the point where you basically couldn’t beat him.” (Roddick clarifies: “Every two-letter word with potential for high point value: za, xi.”) Lance Hooton, Roddick’s former conditioning coach, remembers how they’d argue over picking All-NBA teams. “Four days later, we’d be in a taxi in Rome or somewhere,” says Hooton, “and he goes, ‘I can’t fucking believe you chose Tony Parker over Steve Nash.’” His friend Jen Hodge recalls a pickleball game on a trip to the Bahamas to celebrate Roddick’s 40th birthday. “Three hours later, I’ve got sweat pouring off me and blisters,” she says. “I thought we’d go to a resort and have cocktails. Why did I think that?”
Sean Manning
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