“You know, she’s the Jordan of all sports. She’s flirting really hard with being the best woman athlete of all time, and she does it with style. She does it with ferocity,” Andy Roddick told Vanity Fair back in 2015, a bold truth he’s stood by about Serena Williams ever since. Roddick, a longtime admirer and childhood friend of Serena Williams, has always believed she’s bigger than tennis; she transcends the very idea of sport. Ironically, the former US Open champion now says Serena dominated him as a child, and explains her natural talent on grass courts, power, precision, and poise, making her almost too perfect for Wimbledon. Wondering what he said?

If you rewind the clock a few smoky years back, you’ll find a moment that still sparks laughter and awe in equal measure in American tennis. It was 2009, during Elton John’s charity match, when Serena Williams faced off against Andy Roddick and won. But Serena, never one to let a win go quietly, took to Twitter with a playful jab that still lives rent-free in tennis memory. “Morning guys!! Yesterday in Elton John charity I AGAIN beat Andy Roddick. That make me 3 and 0 against him!! He’s not very good. I’m better,” she added. That cheeky tweet wasn’t just banter, it was a declaration of playful dominance. But here’s the kicker: that 3-0? Does it count their childhood sparring days? 

In a recent episode on the “Tennis Channel”, Roddick was asked a hilariously innocent question: Did he ever lose to Serena when they were kids? That’s when Andy dropped a truth bomb, equal parts amusing and humbling. “I lost a practice set against Serena Williams, we were at Macy’s together. I lost my career record against Serena zero and one. So I can’t help. I lost a set 6-4 when we were like ten,” he confessed with a grin. After all, they’ve known each other since they were eight and even trained together for four formative years in Florida.

Later, as Roddick shared this gem of a memory, the segment shifted gears toward greatness, specifically, the sheer dominance the Williams sisters have displayed on the grass courts of Wimbledon. The numbers don’t lie: a combined 12 singles titles between them. Serena lifted the trophy 7 times, while Venus added five more to the family’s legendary collection. And here’s a goosebump stat: Serena Williams, who last won Wimbledon in 2016, remains the last American woman to win the prestigious title. That’s not just history: it’s legacy carved in emerald blades. But Roddick didn’t just stop at storytelling, though.

With Wimbledon just around the corner, he cracked open the vault on why the Williams sisters were such unstoppable forces at SW19. “Their ball flight and their power and their ability to move and run through shots, and most importantly, some that kind of doesn’t get talked about enough on grass, is the ability, when you’re running, to create pace to get out of trouble,” he revealed. 

Roddick explained later how Serena and Venus didn’t just hit winners, they dismantled opponents. “Right. If you know that you’re kind of a runaway train one way, you have to create that pace mechanism because you need a weak reply, right? Because the court is open, and it’s tough to kind of turn and burn on the grass. They were so good at injecting pace when they knew that it was going to be a tough recovery,” he added. 

Through it all, Roddick, even today, remains a proud admirer, forever vocal about Serena’s impact on the sport and beyond. His stories, though laced with humor, always circle back to reverence. 

Andy Roddick reveals how Serena Williams and Big-3 transformed tennis

Beneath the glittering lights and roaring applause of professional tennis lies a reality that’s far grittier than the glamor suggests. Yet, amid this brutal journey, the effortless dominance of icons like the Spaniard Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, and the iconic Serena Williams has created a mirage, one that seems almost too perfect to be real. Andy Roddick shattered that illusion, shedding light on how these legends have reshaped fans’ expectations, often setting the bar impossibly high.

On a revealing episode of Served with Andy Roddick, the former top seed peeled back the curtain on the distorted lens through which fans now view the game. “With the Big Three [Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, and Rafael Nadal], with Serena, we feel entitled to peak performance all of the time, for decades at a time and that’s no real life. They made it their real life, but that’s not the expectation going forward,” Roddick stated. His words struck deep, reminding us that superhuman consistency isn’t the norm.

He also took us back to a moment from the 2021 US Open, before Carlos Alcaraz claimed his 1st major title. Even then, the hype was palpable. “I remember I was at the US Open two years before Alcaraz had won a major, but there was a lot of hype around him. And I’d be doing these corporate sweet visits we do together up three sometimes. Was Alcaraz gonna win 10 majors? He hasn’t won a single major yet, and you’re putting him ahead names Agassi, Lindl, McEnroe, Connors, Becker, Edberg,” he recalled, stunned at the weight of expectations dumped on rising stars.

For Roddick, Serena Williams remains the fiercest of them all, an unshakable symbol of excellence and inspiration. Even in retirement, her presence looms large over the sport, a constant reminder of the magic that once graced the courts!