Tennis champion Andy Roddick speaks with Equinox about his career highlights on and off the court.
It’s been more than a decade since tennis star Andy Roddick retired from the sport, but the 40-year-old isn’t filling his days with leisure activities. The former top-ranking athlete heads the Andy Roddick Foundation, which he founded in 2000 to hold after-school programs and summer camps for children in Austin. He’s also the co-founder of multiple businesses, including ViewFi, a telehealth company focused on musculoskeletal care, Sweetens Cove Spirits, a bourbon company, and a commercial real estate company. In between his ventures, he still manages to find the time to work on his golf game.
Below, an abbreviated version of Equinox's audio conversation with Roddick, during which he shares insight into his training and mindset during his pro days and how he continues to find purpose today.
At one point, you held the record for the fastest serve, at 155 miles per hour. How much of that was natural? How much of that was training?
A mix. I had a weird motion where, when I started, I had a quick little hitch. I didn't have a long, traditional motion, and I would jump off of two feet — I guess now they call it a platform serve, but I didn't know what to call it then — as opposed to bringing a foot up and doing the whole deal. And I used to serve normally, and I was playing against a good friend of mine, one of my best friends from my former life. We were just kids — 16 years old — and Mardy Fish was beating the crap out of me in practice. So I was frustrated, and I just tossed the ball up off of two feet, hit it as hard as I could, and it went in. That was kind of where my serve was born.
It was equal parts luck, but we knew that my shoulder was probably gonna have a lot of stress points throughout my career. So we didn't wait for it to start hurting or manifest the stress physically. At 18, 19 years old, I was already on a pretty strict flexibility program. Every day, I would do the little muscles. I know a lot of us that go to Equinox, we focus on some beach muscles a little too often. So it was some of the smaller muscles that we knew would protect long-term, all the while knowing that I was only going to get so many turns of the shoulder in.
By being kind of proactive and maybe peeking around the corner a little bit with preparation, strengthening, and flexibility, we were able to keep it together for maybe longer than some expected. I certainly wasn't going to pay my figurative bills for life with the rest of my game. So I needed to make sure that my serve was okay.
Like a lot of sports, tennis requires such a high level of both physical and mental toughness. How did you work to maintain both as a pro?
It's weird. In the rearview, growing up, it was just what you did. It was hard, but you were taught that's the way it was supposed to be. I kind of always thought that if I was working hard enough that everything would fall into place. If I could go back, I would probably be a little bit more introspective and thoughtful and, frankly, honest with what was going on as opposed to [going] onto the next thing, [thinking] I'm just gonna kind of outwork my emotions.
It's certainly not easy. Tennis is a great sport and it's a brutal sport because you are isolated. You're the head coach. You're the star player. On the court, you're going to have to manage the shot clock, figure out where your fatigue levels are, and so it’s just a fascinating arena for me. Especially now, I'll sit up here, where we're in the underbelly of the U.S. Open at Arthur Ashe Stadium where we're doing this interview, and I sat in stands last year and I'm like, “Man, this
game is hard.” I don't know that I gave it enough credit when I was playing. Obviously, I knew it was, but just the everyday commitment that it takes and the inability to pass the ball on a bad day is something I don't think I gave enough respect to when I was in it.
What advice do you have for amateur tennis players who want to be competitive?
The two questions that I hear most often that I think are fundamentally wrong is, “How often should I play?” with which I counter, “How many times are you happy to play while also being intentional and focused about it?” That's something I learned when I was a kid. My mom was pretty diligent. We started off at an hour lesson a week, and then I was like, “Well, that's not enough — I need more.” So I think that's the start of the conversation. I think when people [ask], “How many hours should I play?” It depends on how much you like it, how focused you are. I'd rather have you play less and be fully dialed in.
The other thing is — this sounds so simple — but you'll get out and do clinics with amateur players, and they want the one highlight shot that they can post somewhere and it looks great. That will live forever, but you won't win a lot of matches with that kind of ethos, and people forget that tennis doesn't start with a swing. It starts with their feet. A ball that's hit well but missed isn't nearly as valuable as a ball that's hit badly and made. So consistency and footwork, I think, are the two things that are most overlooked in amateur tennis.
After you stopped playing tennis professionally, how did you continue to find purpose in the things that you're passionate about?
As a fellow Equinox member for a long time, the focus certainly shifts. I think being on tour is a pretty selfish existence. You kind of push your body to the max and your general orbit likes to take care of a lot of the day-to-day stuff. They can kind of put you on their shoulders [so you can] try to accomplish something, but that changes very quickly when you exit that space — whether you're entering the business world or my wife and I have been lucky enough to have two great kids — those priorities certainly shift. But the passion with which you approach the ventures is oftentimes [how] you'll find common ground.
You've mentioned some of the ventures you've been involved with. What drew you to those things?
I think curiosity. I was lucky enough to have great advice. I think a lot of times pro athletes, specifically, but sometimes people in general wait for one thing to end before they actually start thinking about what's next. And I had great advice along the lines of building bridges to what your tennis postmortem might look like. I was lucky enough to start my first company while I was playing, so the day that I retired, I didn’t wake up wondering what was next.
When I get to speak with younger athletes and players, we often, when we're in the moment, don't really look outside of ourselves too often. And by nature, it's what you should do: Look at the next game or the next match or the next point or the next workout or the next thing. But you’re kind of living in a bit of a silo. I was lucky to have great advisors [who encouraged me] to start thinking [my future] through — time is generally undefeated against athletes.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.