Andy Roddick

Andy was born in 1982, in Omaha, Nebraska. His mother, Blanche, was a school teacher and his father Jerry a businessman in autmotive maintenance. By his 4th birthaday Andy would endlessly play tennis with the garage door as his opponent. (The garage door probably returned his serve better than many current day pros!)

The family moved to Boca Raton, perfect for year round tennis practice. At the age of 14 Andy put on a strong growth spurt, which took him from 5' to 6' in just a couple of years. He was now tall enough to cream his serves, from racket head to the opponents service box in a straight line. His serve speed crept up to a powerful 120mph. Andy trained under the wing of the experienced Frenchman Tarik Benhabiles, and by 2000 was ready to turn pro.

Early on, Andy had the honor playing against his hero Andre Agassi. He lost in straight sets - Andre taking full advantage of Andy's weekness on the backhand side. Over the next 2 years, Andy travelled full time on the ATP tour, and his results steadily improved, with year end entry rankings of 156 for 2000, 14 for 2001 and 10 for 2002.

In 2003 Andy employed Brad Gilbert as his coach (Brad is author of the best selling tennis book, 'Winning Ugly' - the title describes the contents pretty accurately). With Brad's help, surely mostly psychological, since Brad in his playing days was no master craftsmen, Andy climbed to the summit of world tennis, ending the year by winning the Grand Slam US open.

Since then, Andy has rarely been out of the top 10, with consistently great results on his two best surfaces, hard and grass (his record on clay is quite poor, because his huge serve is largely nullified by the slow surface).