April 14, 2026 • 42 mins
When COVID told us we all needed to be six feet apart, some people became addicted to TikTok and other people picked up a racket. Since 2019, tennis participation in the U.S. has grown by 54 percent. And that's excluding all the avid pickleball lovers who keep stealing their courts. So, why are we just becoming obsessed with a game that Andy Roddick has been obsessed with his whole life? Kal talks to the former number one player in the world about why and how his sport is making a comeback.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
When COVID told us we all needed to be six
feet apart. Some people became addicted to TikTok, and other
people picked up a racket, and I guess some of
those people also made TikTok videos about how they're picking
up rackets. But the point is, since twenty nineteen, people
playing recreational tennis in the US has grown by fifty
four percent. In twenty twenty five, twenty seven point three
(00:23):
million Americans played tennis. That's roughly the population of Australia,
just out there, hitting and grunting and getting pissed over
all their courts now being used for pickleball. The US
Open just had its highest attendance ever, and players like
Naomi Osaka and Novak Djokovic have forged new waves of fandoms.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
It's like squid game. All of a sudden, you're in
the final and then you walk in. It's just like quiet.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Today, I'm talking with a legend in the game. He's
won thirty two titles, including the US Open. In two
thousand and three, he was the number one men's ten
player in the world, and at one point he hit
the fastest serve ever recorded at one hundred and fifty
five miles an hour. My guest is Andy Roddick. He's
going to help me understand the psychology of tennis and
(01:13):
why we're just becoming obsessed with a game that he's
loved his whole life. Here Lee Go agon agon aon. Hey,
I'm cal Penn and this is Here We Go Again,
a show that takes today's trends and headlines and asks
why does history keep repeating itself? Here Lee go.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Hey, how's it going good? How are you? Everything is good?
It's nice to uh meet you.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Likewise, thanks for doing this.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Hi am Andy Rotick, former number one tennis player in
the world and currently the fourth most important opinion in
my household.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Awesome, Well, I'm excited to talk to you. And Andy,
one of the reasons that I really wanted to talk
to you is that culturally in the US, there's been
this crazy trend since twenty nineteen of people loving a
sport that you've obviously always loved. Have you felt a
surge like that? And why do you think people are
interested in tennis in ways that they hadn't been before
(02:27):
the last like six or seven years.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Well, one, thank you for having me on. I'm a listener.
So this is surreal. Oh thanks dude a bit. So
I certainly appreciate you in everything you do. Yeah, it's weird.
You know, you would have owned my house if we
had made a bet, and you would have said post
one namers, right, I call them the Avengers. It's like Roger
Rafa Serena. Yeah, you know, after them, all of a sudden,
(02:51):
you see a surge in tennis. You wouldn't have thought
that that would have been the case, right. But I
think one thing is very significant in this conversation is
that you could play tennis during COVID, right, and people
felt comfortable.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Doing it during COVID, Right.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
So you look at twenty twenty, and then all of
a sudden, the participation rates go through the roof because
you know, we're not having to huddle around each other.
It's not like a basketball, and we're not breathing on
each other, and it's not you know, like all of
these things. But then I think also the product is
so good that you know, you can't you couldn't recreate
a marketing campaign that said, okay, we're going we don't
(03:25):
have anything to do there for tennis is going to
be the option. But I think now what we're seeing
with these rates of people watching. I think with people
continuing to play, is the product is so good at
the professional level that it's retained and turn people who
are participants into fans and then vice versa. So I
think it's almost a two way street now. But I mean,
(03:48):
you hate you say this sensitively because you don't want
to sound opportunistic about a pandemic, right, But I do
think there is a direct effect from what happened in
a silo during COVID, specifically with tennis, and kind of
what we're seeing five years later with people who are
watching and playing.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Interesting. I'm just thinking early two thousands, and I'm putting
myself career wise in the same sort of scenario like
early to mid two thousands. I don't remember relying or
being told to rely on social media for marketing. Do
you think that that's played a role since twenty nineteen
in the sport expanding so much?
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Yeah, I think we're probably in a great spot to
benefit from it. Listen, we're doing this show, and we
do a tennis show a podcast as well, and it's
I mean, as I'm telling you your business, but you
don't need permission to put something out now, right, you
can just do it. Tennis specifically as an individual sport.
(04:46):
You know, you used to have to go to a
journalist and then you hope that they would tell the
story that the.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Way that you wanted it to be told, right, And.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I'm sure it was the same with you when you
were kind of on the on the upswing also, and
now you don't have to worry about a league when
you're saying something. You know, one of my biggest things
is people give me credit for like, okay, you were
you were always honest and press conferences and you would
kind of say whatever, and I say, yeah, but I
wouldn't have if if sixty of my teammates would have
(05:14):
had to answer for what I was saying, I was
the only one that had to answer for what I
was saying, So I'd never blame. And the question is
normally presented as you know, well, the quarterbacks don't tell
us anything. I'm like, yeah, it's not because they don't
want to tell you something. It's because they don't want
the sixty people on their team to have to take
time to respond to what they said. So I think
in all that, just to say I think Tennessee's uniquely
(05:34):
positioned for its athletes to take advantage of whether it's
TikTok or Twitter or you know, whatever else it is
and kind of go directly to fans. I think we're
probably set up to kind of take advantage of modern
media a little bit more.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
That makes sense. Did you play during COVID.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah, I mean I spent that I retired in twenty twelve,
and I didn't really play much, which I say, I
played customer tennis, Like if you do a clinic or
you get paid to go do something, I would do it.
But I didn't really play much tennis after I retired,
and now I play all the time again, but I didn't.
I didn't play much during I didn't play any more
than normal or usual in COVID. And I think that
(06:17):
almost proves the point is like tennis was never going
to lose the people that already played. Yeah, and I
think there was only upside as far as participation given
that that kind of very very very serious and unique
set of circumstances.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
And I know you've talked about this elsewhere, but but
for people who don't know what what's what was the
reason that you had you didn't play for a while,
and then what was the reason for coming back into
enjoying it?
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yeah, there there's no real interest otherwise, you know, other
than I think I was just generally fatigued on it,
you know. And I know that you have had kind
of a bunch of different iterations in your career and
you've I was, I was, I just wasn't curious about
it when I stopped, you know, I think I wanted
a breath, and then we fell in love again, you know,
(06:59):
after a certain amount of time passed. It's like, Okay,
I'm looking I'm forty three, I'm not getting younger. I'm
going do I have ten years of being quasi athletic
and what do I want to be doing with that athleticism?
And then you kind of fall back into this thing
you love again, and then you haven't played for so long,
and you play a.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Little bit more and a little bit more and a
little bit more.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
And some of those familiar feelings come back and it
becomes kind of addictive all over again.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
I mean that's nice though, to be able to be
able to play like you with that feeling that you
had when you were nine.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
I know, and all I want right now is to
go back and be like, gosh, I wonder what I'm
trying to remember what it felt like when I was
twenty four and my body worked.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Unfair comparison, though, Yeah, when I think of tennis recently,
so I watched it growing up. I was not very
good playing it, but you know, enjoyed it. For me,
it was also maybe the last ten years, not just
since COVID, but when I moved to New York and
the US Open is so accessible. Yeah, and ticket prices,
(07:58):
by the way, are so accessible for the Open, and
there are all these activities around the city, especially the
last ten years, and then since COVID. Obviously things in
things in parks where you know, if people didn't feel
comfortable going in proximity to each other, things are spread out.
There's just a lot of love for the for the Open,
but there's also the criticism that I heard from friends
where like, oh, you're into tennis? Was people think of
(08:20):
it with a certain air of inaccessibility, like it's an
elite sport, it's a it's a wealthy man's sport. I
think we definitely lean into that too, like the last Open,
where they're like, oh, if you have one hundred dollars,
you can ge chicken nuggets with caviar and a little champagne.
Like that sounds delaceous, but it kind of reinforces it. Oh,
it's not necessarily for everybody. I think it is for everybody,
(08:41):
and I have plenty of friends in different places who
access it. What's your experience with with that criticism.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Yeah, there's a couple of different pieces there. I'll get
to the US open kind of pricing of things because obviously,
like you can't dispute the caviar and nug Yeah, I
think the biggest disservice we do when combating the narrative
that it's like this upper crust like short white shorts
and a headband thing like our champions. Like think of
(09:09):
the biggest names that you know, like Venus and Serena
are from they played on public courts in Compton, right,
Like Agassi's dad is an immigrant from Iran who worked
the door at Caesar's to pay for his tennis lessons.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Novak Djokovic grew up in.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
War torn Serbia, right, So like it's it's just not
that at the highest level, it's just simply like not
that you know, like the storytelling is is just the
best players haven't been from that. Like my dad was
a farmer from Wisconsin. Like it's just it just doesn't
really exist now that the US Open of things and
(09:47):
like ticket prices and everything else is like if they
don't sell them for a certain price point, they're I mean,
I'm gonna attempt to explain the resale market to everyone
who doesn't need the explanation. But we've had the term
of director of the US Open on it's like, how
do you fund better experiences and get you know, they
have live music with great musicians who have songs on
the radio. Yeah, you charge more for nuggets, right, and
(10:10):
you make the overall experience just lights out and it's
you know, it's like it's like the Oscars of sports. Now,
how do you differentiate from the Mets and the Yankees
and the Nicks And how do you become New York's
own event? It's probably not going to be through subtlety.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Yeah, for sure. Do you remember what made you fall
in love with tennis initially? Like, do you have a
first memory of tennis that made you go, I love
this and I'm good at it?
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Uh, that's kind of a chicken or the egg. I
think I kind of remember this. I don't know if
it's one of those things where you have a memory
of being told it or it's an actual memory. But
we lived in Nebraska and there was a I don't
know that we would have ever played tennis, but my
parents kind of believed in there's value in individual sports, right,
there's accountability. You can't blame someone else. It's not the coach.
(10:56):
It's like they thought there was a very distinct set
of life lessons that existed an individual sport, and then
also that same set of life lessons, maybe different lessons,
but in team sports. And it just so happens. They
lived up the street from a couple indoor tennis courts,
and so back then it wasn't even tennis. It was
like you go and it was babysitting where you like
(11:18):
throwing a tennis ball like a snoopy cutout.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
But I had an older brother.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Who played, and I'm sure similar to you know every
other person ever, you're influenced by proximity of something, right,
like my brother played. Therefore I would tag along, and
so it became familiar to me. I don't remember a
time where I wasn't completely fluent around a tennis court
or a match. And I used to go to you know,
(11:43):
Casual Tennis Center, which is a public facility in Austin, Texas,
where I grew up did most of my growing up.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Maybe jury's still out, but.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
My mom would drop me off in the morning and
I would run pickup games all day, you know, and
I would try to like win money games, and that
was like I was obsessed with that.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
It was so much fun.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
I was the kid in the pro shop who people
would call and say, is that kid there? Yes, And
then I'd have a game and I would play twelve
hours a night, and I loved it. I just couldn't
love it more. I loved I don't know if I
loved the game.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
I don't know. If I loved the hustle. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
But kids are no different than adults, and you kind
of like what you're good at.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
You've mentioned this twice now, the idea that it's an
individual sport. And one of the reasons I really wanted
to talk to you is as someone who's an admirer
of tennis, the psychology around it is also super fascinating
to me. I wrote a book a couple of years ago,
and when I was writing my book, it was one
of those things, it's a memoir, and I'm like, there's
a point that I think every memoir writer, especially if
(12:43):
you're like an actor, athlete or just like not a journalist,
that you reach when you're writing where you like deeply
hate yourself. And so I share this with a couple
of friends and actually one of my friends was like, Oh,
you're writing your book. Do you hate yourself yet? Like? What? No?
So yeah, call me in three months. I called them
three months later. I fucking hate myself.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Tell it.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Tell me about that though, about the hating yourself. I
think in my first it it felt very self indulgent,
like I wanted to write a book because I thought
I had a unique story about about loving you know,
first and foremost, it's comedy and it and it's filmmaking
and TV. And then I, you know, I took this
weird sabbatical for a couple of years and worked and
worked in public service, and so I just thought, oh,
(13:23):
there's actually no, there wasn't a book about uh about
being able to do two things, not that I was
doing them simultaneously, but how do you craft a career
in both, and so I thought, if there's if there's
a funny book that's similar to like a like a
Tina Fey or a Rain Wilson. That's funny first, and
that's that, but that's also got an undercurrent of like,
for the twenty five year old me, this would have
(13:45):
been a cool book. That was my goal, but halfway
through it just felt really self indulgent. The first the
first draft of the first three chapters, I turned into
my editor. She didn't do notes. She just called me
and goes, okay, so you pitched us. You pitched us
a really funny book. I'm like, I did, this is
(14:07):
really dark? Like what because, yeah, there's nothing funny in this.
It's just three chapters of what it was like getting
bullied as a kid. I'm like, yeah, but it's not funny.
She because, no, when you described it to me, it
was funny in are in like your pitch meeting, But
this was not funny. So I'm not gonna give you notes.
I'm just gonna give you another month to redo the
first three chapters.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
It's just gonna give you another try.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah, She's just gonna give you another chance. And I
realized what I was doing wrong was and this is
the part that's like, oh I hate myself, is I
had told those A lot of those stories I had
told before to friends, like over beers, right, so you're
having like four beers with friends and the story just
flows out and it's self deprecating and funny. When it
was just like me and a computer recounting what it
(14:50):
was like being thirteen, like being you know, bullied by
some asshole in like seventh or eighth grade, and it's
just me and the computer, the actor part of my
brain where you're just remembering what that feels like, and
it's and I was writing stuff like and I hope
Gabriel is dead, Like it was just shit. That just
was clearly I had a chip on my shoulder from
when I was thirteen that I hadn't fully resolved. So
(15:13):
that's what I mean by like that, Oh God, I
don't need I don't need a book with my name
on it. I think I just need to go to therapy.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
That's that's interesting because like I've.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
I've never been motivated to do it because I feel
like there are yours sounds like like super interesting as
far as like a very unique lane, but like books
are either it's like your greatest hits or you're telling
on someone else.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Yes, the book that was recommended to me while I
was in my funk of writing, and I actually took
a break from writing. I wrote most of the book
during COVID, but a friend of mine recommended Agasy's book open. Ugh,
So that doesn't either of the things that you were
(16:00):
talking about. And that book hit me obviously. It's about
the types of pressures that tennis players face in a
particularly individual sport. But it hit me as an actor
because I'm not comparing the two obviously, but like you're
kind of on your own, Like we have teams, of course,
but at the end of the day, if you don't
nail that audition or if you don't nail your part
(16:21):
in your project, it's kind of only on you. So
Agassi's book just made me immediately. I made that comparison
because I think I needed it at that particular time
in my writing. But it also then it was like
the aha of like, oh, yeah, this is not basketball
or soccer or baseball. I mean, I know agassi story
from reading the book, but can you walk me through
(16:43):
for you what happens mentally? Like when you prepare for
a match, when you step into a court, from the
difficulty to like staying focused or the discipline, like how
do you even enter that space? And then you started
when you were young, right, so I assume the pressures
(17:04):
grow as you get better.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Yeah, I can't possibly not talk about Andre's book with
you before I get to my own experiences. But so
there's there's two parts. There's two good stories. So my
wife read it and we were we had been together
a couple of years at that point. I don't I
think we were maybe engaged, but not married, right, And
(17:27):
like when I was playing, to your point, like with
the pressures, I was, I'm not often in a bad mood,
and even if I am now I can make a
joke about being in a bad mood. Whereas when I played,
it was like it was like the emotions were dictated
by things, you know, the anxiousness or the.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Match or whatever it was.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Anyways, so my wife read his book when it came out,
and it was actually a couple of months before it
came out. He sent us and I'll tell you that
story because it's just Andrea in a in a nutshell.
But she read it and she goes, I think I
understand you better from having read his book.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Like, and so the example I was going to give
before you actually mentioned that you had read it was Andre.
It wasn't a greatest hits album. He like skipped over
the successes and then threw himself under the bus, which
is why I thought it was a captivating read.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
It wasn't others.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
It was like he went against the two rules of
what most books are. But I'll also tell you like
his awareness of like humans, which most people at his
level where you're like, you know, Mount Rushmore of whatever
you do, forget these little parts of kind of humanity.
He had retired two years earlier, obviously, Like if you
(18:44):
haven't read this book, it is loaded with like bombshell
revelations that we didn't really know. Like I knew Andre personally,
and I didn't know that he was like in his
living room smoking meth in nineteen ninety seven, like and
we we were. He was my idol, like he was
my mentor, like huge, huge moments. And he called me
like two months before its release and he said, hey, listen,
(19:07):
there's a lot of stuff in this book. He goes,
what I don't want is for it to come out
on day one. You have, you know, been a I
don't know where you're going to be. Let's say you're Wimbledon.
Obviously you're not going to carve out six hours to
read a book. He goes, I don't want you on
your heels when someone says, you know what about Andre
and Meth He goes, So I'm going to send you
(19:28):
the book, not because I want to coach any responses
or you know I He goes, I'm here if you
want an explanation as my friend and as someone who
we you know, we've had a relationship. But he goes,
what I don't want is for you to just be
blindsided by any questions, because you're probably going to be
the first person that gets asked about it. And I
thought that was like very thuugh.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
As far as like the mental side of tennis, I'll
tell you like having some distance from those days now,
I've heard like I had a dear friend, Marty Fish,
who has an unbelievable documentary on and if you're interested
in this, like this is you have to watch this.
Marty Fish is a dear friend of mine. He got
(20:09):
up to seven in the world in tennis. He's like
the kind of guy that like, is seven in the
world in tennis, he's a plus seven handicap in golf.
He goes and takes batting practice at you know, major
league ballparks and hits like twelve homers in batting practice.
He's just like that guy who's kind of good at everything.
But in his own words, he got to a point
where the mental ask of tennis kind of of you know,
(20:33):
broke him, you know, to the point where you know,
he would have these anxiety attacks and it was you know, physical,
and then it was mental, and then it was back
to physical, and then it was mental, and it was
like and we don't know, you know, what was going
to start at any point, to the point where like
he didn't want to get on an airplane. It basically
ends he was on his way to the courts. He
(20:53):
was playing Federer in a fourth round of the US
Open and was what you know, he was with his
wife in a car ride to the US Open. He's like,
I don't know how I'm gonna do it. I have
to go out there, and I just can't. Like he
was spiraling a little bit and she goes, no, you
don't like you don't have to go out there like
this is gotten to the point where it's like an
(21:13):
actual serious like this is this is not healthy. But
you look at these you know, athletes, and you think
they're like superheroes, and then it's like they're very human.
They're just you know, a lot of times we're just
faking it. And when he explains a lot of what
he was going through, it's weird because I think I
(21:35):
had normalized a lot of the experiences of tennis. It's like, oh,
you know, an hour before your match, when the match
before you, all of a sudden, someone else wins the
four said and it's not finished, and you know that
you have another hour, and then your brain goes to, okay,
I need some fuel, but I can't have a full meal.
Like all these little, like miniature decisions where it's like
(21:55):
I had this association where to this day, if I
taste a banana on its own, I have like this
reflex of like I'm gonna throw up because that was
like my nervous food. Oh yeah, like that was what
I ate because I didn't want to have to like
chew through something more solid, but I don't. That was
just normal, Like I didn't realize that was kind of
fucked up for a long time. And I think the
(22:16):
isolated nature of tennis is just insane, Like there's like
even having a caddie to talk to or you know,
someone else who's in on the decision is something that
I can't even wrap my head around. The other thing
that kind of always gets a reaction is like, think
about walking in on Day one of the US Open. Right,
(22:37):
there's one hundred and twenty eight singles players. There's hundreds
of more doubles players, so you're looking at like three
hundred people in a locker room. You're stepping over bags
like you're just there's people everywhere. You're like sliding in
between conversations. There's there's no room to operate. Right, So
then that field, you're watching it through the course of
two weeks. If things go well, you're watching that locker
(22:58):
room get cut in half every day.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
It's like squid game. Oh wow, right yeah, after round one.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
One sixty four like gone, and then all of a sudden,
if you make it far enough, you're in the final
in just two weeks. Earlier, it was like Grand Central
Station at five point fifteen in the evening and then
you walk in and you walk past the only person
that's going to be in the way from like a
legacy defining moment potentially, and it's like a man, it's
(23:24):
like okay, but it's just so, and it's it's just
like quiet, and it's only your team, and it's just
how the kind of event transforms over the course of
two weeks as far as the way you experience it
and the way it affects like emotions is wild.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
At those times, do you connect with other players about
what you're going through? Like, for example, when actors are
on press tours, you recognize that you know, you're a
You're in a different city every day and a half,
sometimes two cities a day. You love this because you're
promoting a film that you got the chance. There's no
(24:01):
reality in which the stresses of that are a thing
that I can call my college buddies to vent about.
That's just not gonna happen. Like, Oh, you're complaining because
you're starting in a movie and you got to go
to thirty cities to promote it. Right, I'm just not
gonna do that. I know that I can't do that.
I also don't have the time. If I'm in that
zone to like do an hour with a therapist, there's
(24:23):
that hour is not there in the schedule. So you
end up relying on other actors who understand that you
have this immense privilege, but it's also just this psychologically
insane place to be. What do you have any equivalent
of that at when you're in there? Or is it
other players, is it coaches or is it truly nobody?
Speaker 3 (24:42):
It's former players, okay.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
And then also like the better you get, the narrower
the silo of relatable knowledge is, right, Like, someone who
is eighty in the world is one of the best
in the world out their jobs, and I can't talk
to them about how to navigate the last four players
in the tournament, right because they haven't done it. They
don't know, they don't play on stadium ever. And so
(25:07):
to your point, I ended up midway through my career,
I hired Jimmy Connors, legend, legendary Jimmy Connors, and he
wasn't even around the game at that point. Like he
was he basically made the US Open mainstream. He won
it five times on three different surfaces. Like you couldn't
take your eyes off of him. The first time I
(25:29):
saw him play, I was nine, and he turned he
turned a stadium into like a rock show or theater
with like he would tell people to get up and
they got up. I'm like, God, this guy has control
over all these humans and their emotions from playing tennis.
And now I brought him back in fourteen years after
anyone had seen him, and I was like, listen, I
know the players. I'm twenty five at this point. I
(25:51):
don't have a problem showing up to practice. You don't
have to babysit me. I like to wake up early.
I'm not going to go out the night before, like
we don't have to do any of these things.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
I go.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
I need you because I'm going to have insecure questions
maybe twice during the tournament, where like I'm worried and
I need to know that the person I'm talking to
understands what I'm saying, not the words that I'm saying,
but the feelings that I'm that I'm that I'm saying,
And so it becomes like a very narrow group. And
I think you've seen that trend now more and more
(26:22):
with with kind of players leading on former players. Nobody
active because you can't be insecure and you can't point
out your own weaknesses to someone you might play the
next week.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Right.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Marty was my like one of my best friends on Earth,
and he lived at our house in high school, and
he was going through this whole ordeal, and he didn't
share a lot of it with me. You know, he
would say, Hey, I had a little thing. I had
to go to the hospital last night, but everything's fine.
We were still on tour together. There was every chance
that what he told me in March I would still
(26:53):
have knowledge of if we played in the semi finals
of the US Open four or five six months later.
You know, maybe that's a little bit different than an
actor because you guys are on projects together, but it's
not as if that person can ruin you head to
head at least knowingly or like knowingly kind of expose
those insecurities or weaknesses. So it almost has to be
(27:14):
a former player.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
That's yeah. I hadn't thought about that extra level of
isolation that you experienced. There are a lot of elite
tennis players now who have been more outspoken about Yeah,
mental health, right, Naomi Osaka, Marty Fish Alcarez. When you
see them expressing these challenges. What runs through your mind?
Speaker 2 (27:35):
I wish the culture had been different sooner and they
all act a little bit differently, like Marty's was.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
It's always weird because.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
I get, like, you get asked about naomio Osaka from
someone who doesn't really follow much, and they're like, why, Like,
she gets nervous about going into press, right, Yeah, the
thing that causes her anxiety is the tennis a little bit.
But I would guess that seventy or eighty percent of
the mental fatigue load that she's caring is because she
(28:07):
has to go talk about it.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Afterwards, and that's not who she is.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
And so people say like, oh, she's mentally weak because
she can't even go to press. I'm like, motherfucker, Like
she she's won four out of four Grand Slam finals
and you're telling me that I'm mentally tough because I
can go make fart jokes in a press conference like that.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
That's ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Like when you have these guys like I think of
Simone Biles and people are like, oh, she's got the
twisties like they're making it. I'm like, you're, I go,
You're you're like in front of a microphone talking shit
about someone who like risks breaking their neck every time
she jumps off of something and is having a rough
go yeah right, Like it's just it's just weird how
we define mental toughness and poke holes in it. But
(28:51):
I'm glad that now, like Alcaaz saying, yeah, I just
struggled today.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
I was a lie. I was like a.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Little anxious, nervous, I don't know. But then the the
superpower is that like once you say it and it's like, okay,
he's gonna tell us what he's feeling. But then fast
forward like six months later when he's about to play
the finals of Wimbled and he goes, yeah, I feel
pretty good.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
You're like, oh shit.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
It's like, oh no, no, because he would tell us
if he wasn't.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Like this is like he's gonna he's gonna drill all
of us.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
That's amazing. Also amazing, there's a there's a there's a
script version of this where it's all just mind games
on purpose, Like he was fine the whole time. He
just wanted to play mind games with everybody else.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
I talked with a player who's like a top ten player,
you know. I talked to a lot of players kind
of in in confidence and secretly. But one of the
things that I told him was like, yeah, if you're early,
like the book on you is X, I go, if
you're up a couple sets, do something that's crazy, someone
will video it and then just talk about it, impress
and it changes like the entire dynamic of style. I
(29:52):
go to your point, I go, you can you can
sell your own shit.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
If you need to. You have the microphone.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Yeah, so there there that that is a like that's
a real.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Oper Can you walk me through how you mentally prepared
for the two thousand and three Open, which which you want?
Speaker 2 (30:15):
That one was so they all kind of act differently
based on Like that was fast because that tournament had
been backed up because of rain and it was before
the roof, Like there was a lot of space between.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
So I played four.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Matches in like four and a half days basically, so
it was like a race to the finish, So there
wasn't a lot of like I don't know if it's
like when you know that you have the most critical
scene in anything you're doing and you have three days
off to think about it. That's probably for me that
would seem worse like it's like I'm gonna, you know,
get in my own head or I'm gonna overthink it,
or so the reality of the Open was I want
(30:52):
a five setter save to match point in the semis
Well finished it because Andrea played the first match because
he was Andre and he got to do what he
wanted for the TV audience, and so I played the
second one and finished at like seven pm.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
So as soon as that.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Match ends, you're in a race for a four o'clock
tip off the next day. Right, It's like I got
a I just played you know, four hours in a
New York summer.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
I have to get you know, my footspad. I have
to get food in me.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
And it was almost a gift as long as my
body was healthy enough to play that I didn't actually
have enough time to sit around and think of all
the things that could go wrong.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
So it was, it was, it was.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
It was very interesting, but just generally, I was very
attached to routine, right, Like I wanted to have the
same you can control when you warm up. It's like
I wanted to be able to eat in a certain pocket.
I wanted to, you know, I needed an element of
control in a world where almost everything was out of
(31:51):
my control up until we went on. So I was
very diligent about like the same routine, eating at the
same three restaurants, you know, kind of keep being. I
wanted to make things feel smaller while I was playing,
and so it was all the same drinks, it was
the same you know. I was very My team knew
I wanted this done a certain way at a certain time,
(32:12):
and that was almost like my binkie, right, that was
like my It was like giving a kid a pacifier.
But I slept fine, and it's weird. That was a
training ground. I ended up playing four of the five
Slam finals that I played on a rain delay with
no time in between. It was only the last one
I played ever that I actually had a day off
in between, which was the worst day ever. Like all
I did was I feel like I was going to
(32:33):
vomit all day.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Your analogy about having three days off before a big
scene is correct because both a I would love I
love having three days off before a massive scene, but
also it results in me overthinking absolutely everything until I
show up to work. But thankfully we have directors, so
that's who I rely on. When you hit that one
hundred and fifty five mile per hour serve at the
(32:56):
Davis Cup seventy finals was the I guess that the
like that psychology of it's an individual sports. So do
you just walk off and are you like, hell, yeah,
I meant to do that, or are you secretly shocked?
Like what? What? What goes into mastering something like that?
Speaker 2 (33:13):
There's no difference as far as feeling if you hit
it one forty six or one fifty five, like it's like,
oh that came off hot, what was it? But honestly,
like hitting it hard is almost like a party trick.
Like it's not it's you don't like write things down.
It's like I want to hit us serve harder than
anyone like you just you know, I'd give up that record. Mean,
(33:35):
I don't want to be there, but like that meant
nothing to me. It was it's it's fun for like
your teammates at Davis Cup you walk off and they're
like holy shit, man, you know, but it's it's not
anything that's like super serious.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
So it's the NTV Movie Award of Tennis.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Correct.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
In previous interviews, you've talked a lot about how tennis
is a great sport. But it's also very brutal. What
are the most brutal aspects for for fans who don't understand,
especially now that you've got this this huge uptick in
the last six years of people who are watching the sport.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
So I always like to make kind of comparisons from
you know, meet people where they are. So if you're
like an NFL fan, yeah, and I'll watch the like
the Sunday Countdown, It's like, oh man, that that like
they had to travel west, they had to go to
the HA to go the West coast. Start is rough,
and I'm like, fuck man, so is like Saturday in
Memphis and Tuesday in Dubai. You know that's It's it's
(34:25):
the NonStop nature of traveling every week and playing forty
weeks a year. Like the season never stops. You start
your off season mid November, maybe late November, and then
you play through a week before that, so it never
really stops. The challenges change over time. You know, when
you're eighteen and you know you've lived in Nebraska and
(34:47):
Texas and all of a sudden you go to Europe
somewhere and the food is not the same and you
can't understand anything, and like there. So there's like the
traveling challenges early, but then just being isolated. You know,
you have your team, you know, it's like you have
your group of friends. It's like high school over again,
like you are friends with the people that you know
talk about the same stuff you do.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
You know.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
There's not a lot of Slovakians who care much about
how the SEC title.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Game went, you know.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
So it's it's just the isolated nature. You never get
a break, and there's not as if like, hey, if
I can just push through this, I have the ability
to breathe for like four months.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
It just it just doesn't exist.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
And I always tell the story just to give context
for like, and it's one example of kind of atmosphere
and circumstance. So the Australian Open used to be played
on a surface that was called rebound ace, and if
you stepped on.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
It, it felt like like.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
A spongey type rubber a most right. And so to
get on center court at the Australian Open, you would
walk down five steps and then walk up three steps.
You'd kind of stand in the bottom right and there
was like a you know, I don't know, size of
a table or something, and then when you announce, you
would walk up three steps, but when you were eye
level with the court down five steps, you could see
(36:05):
like the water bubbles that you would see in like
a desert, you know, if you were like you like
wanted your last drop of water, and you would smell
the court and its smell like burning tires. And so
the on court temperatures in Australia, so whatever, if it's
one hundred and seven outside, the on court temperature of
baking rubber is like one hundred and forty seven degrees,
(36:27):
and so you have to wrap your brain around, Okay,
it smells like tires. This is going to be the
worst four hours of my life. And every time you
do that, you have to be prepared to play six hours.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Right, it might not get there.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
You might win in an hour and forty five minutes,
but just like the mental fuckery of walking out there
knowing that, like you're going to go to this like
extreme place and it's not an extreme place where it's
it's not like a marathon where it's like the goal
is to finish right, and it's you you know what
the race looks like. It's like all these mental decisions
where you don't know that you're running twenty seven. Mind,
(37:00):
you don't know where it's going to go. You don't
know what the person's going to do, you don't know
how they're feeling, you don't have a real so's it's
like all of this unknown with one hundred and forty
seven degrees and burning tires like that. That's one tournament,
and every tournament kind of has a set of circumstances
in that in that realm, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
That's wild. And the schedule piece of it, I guess
I didn't even look at it as a as a
calendar from the perspective of a player. The closest thing
this even sounds I'm a big NASCAR fan, So the
closest thing it sounds like is those guys have like
I think six weeks off a year for six weeks
something like that. But even in the off season, you're
still you know, you're still doing your getting. I can't
(37:38):
imagine looking out knowing that temperature and the smell part
of it. I mean, you tell that so well. We
obviously we would never have any idea the different temperature
and the smell.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
There's like these little moments where like, Okay, you're walking
through air, conditioning, and then you get to the part
where there's an opening, so you feel that first gust
of like it feels like a like a like a
hair dryer, yeah, like if you were to hold it
in front of you, because the wind goes through there.
And then there's like it's like a general progression of
oh fuck, because like you're walking out there, you know
it's gonna suck and there's gonna be a huge, massive
time stuck of your day that has like consequence and
(38:09):
you could be on a plane the next day, yeah,
going home, right, And then it's like the first time
you walk out and then the heat hits you and
you like are like baking, and so there's all these
these like little parts of like whatever our battle is
that maybe don't get told once the once the camera
hits and it's you know, it's so the country club
(38:30):
narrative isn't.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
Quite there for me.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
The other thing you mentioned was like NASCAR is insane
and they're risking they're literally risking their lives every time
they go to work. So I can't imagine the stressors
of that or getting hit in the head by an
NFL lineman. I will say a Grand Slam we're not
dealing with like you know, blunt force trauma, right, but
doing it you have to do what I just explained
(38:54):
seven times in fourteen days.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
That's insane. You have said before that in retirement one
thing you won't do is coach. Why not?
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Uh? You never say never.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
I The thing about tennis is like, I don't know
if there's common ground of like you get an offer
to do an unreal movie on someone else's terms, and
it takes a year and a half of life, Like
I like, I really like my wife, she likes me
most days. I like, I really like my kids. It
(39:29):
would be one of those things where I've gotten calls
from like unlike dream opportunities with brains that I want
to work with, with games that I would love to
like have a say in, and they'd go, oh, I
don't even need you full time, I just need you
for like three months, and I'm going, okay, so two things.
Three months for me is like every moment with with
(39:50):
with life, Like I left tennis and I haven't really
I'm I'm now back, but I'm in a studio in
my hometown right now talking to you, and that's.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
Where I go to work. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
So and I and I watch everything on stream and
everything else. Three months doesn't sound like a lot to
anyone else. And then if you did well in those
three months, and let's say you came up one match
short as a team at like Wimbledon, I know my
first reaction be like, fuck it, we got to do
six months. We got to get over this hump. Like
And I feel like it's like the It's like the
string on a sweater where you pull it a little
(40:18):
bit at a time and then all of a sudden
you're just holding a ball full of string.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Yeah, I mean that makes sense. How would you describe
your relationship with tennis now?
Speaker 3 (40:26):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
I respect it more now than I did when I played.
I think the thirty thousand foot view of tennis does
it a lot of favors.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
I appreciate the.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
Ability to talk about it and to explain it in detail,
because I feel like people, if you give them the
chance and you're not screaming at them, can really actually
understand details.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
It's a psychotic thing.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Man Like I go to the US Open and I sit,
you know, all the way up and there's just these
two like small humans down on there. They look small
from where you're sitting down on court exposed. People are
having the best time ever in the suite next to
them with fancy outfits, and it's just like there's like
two gladiators out there, like not concerned with any good
(41:10):
time that anyone's having, just trying to get a result.
I love tennis now as much as I ever have.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
That's awesome. Congratulations, cheers, Thank you. Andy Rottick is a
former professional tennis player. He holds thirty two titles, including
the US Open, and currently hosts the podcast Served with
Andy Rottick. Here We Go Again as a production of
iHeart Podcasts and Snaffoo Media in association with New Metric Media.
(41:39):
Our executive producers are me kalpen ed Helms, Mike Falbo,
Alissa Martino, Andy Kim, Pat Kelly, Chris Kelly, and Dylan Fagan.
Megan tan is our producer and writer. Dave Shumka is
our producer and editor. Our consulting producer is Romin Borsolino.
Tory Smith is our associate producer. Theme music by Chris Kelly,
logo by Matt Legal, review from Daniel Welsh, Caroline Johnson
(42:03):
and Meghan Halson. Special thanks to Glenn Bassner, Isaac Dunham,
Adam Horn, Lane Klein, and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but
especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman and Nikki Etoor. Thanks for listening. Everybody,
tell your friends, write a review. All of this helps.
I appreciate you listening, and until we go again, I'm
Kelpen
When COVID told us we all needed to be six
feet apart. Some people became addicted to TikTok, and other
people picked up a racket, and I guess some of
those people also made TikTok videos about how they're picking
up rackets. But the point is, since twenty nineteen, people
playing recreational tennis in the US has grown by fifty
four percent. In twenty twenty five, twenty seven point three
(00:23):
million Americans played tennis. That's roughly the population of Australia,
just out there, hitting and grunting and getting pissed over
all their courts now being used for pickleball. The US
Open just had its highest attendance ever, and players like
Naomi Osaka and Novak Djokovic have forged new waves of fandoms.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
It's like squid game. All of a sudden, you're in
the final and then you walk in. It's just like quiet.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Today, I'm talking with a legend in the game. He's
won thirty two titles, including the US Open. In two
thousand and three, he was the number one men's ten
player in the world, and at one point he hit
the fastest serve ever recorded at one hundred and fifty
five miles an hour. My guest is Andy Roddick. He's
going to help me understand the psychology of tennis and
(01:13):
why we're just becoming obsessed with a game that he's
loved his whole life. Here Lee Go agon agon aon. Hey,
I'm cal Penn and this is Here We Go Again,
a show that takes today's trends and headlines and asks
why does history keep repeating itself? Here Lee go.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Hey, how's it going good? How are you? Everything is good?
It's nice to uh meet you.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Likewise, thanks for doing this.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Hi am Andy Rotick, former number one tennis player in
the world and currently the fourth most important opinion in
my household.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Awesome, Well, I'm excited to talk to you. And Andy,
one of the reasons that I really wanted to talk
to you is that culturally in the US, there's been
this crazy trend since twenty nineteen of people loving a
sport that you've obviously always loved. Have you felt a
surge like that? And why do you think people are
interested in tennis in ways that they hadn't been before
(02:27):
the last like six or seven years.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Well, one, thank you for having me on. I'm a listener.
So this is surreal. Oh thanks dude a bit. So
I certainly appreciate you in everything you do. Yeah, it's weird.
You know, you would have owned my house if we
had made a bet, and you would have said post
one namers, right, I call them the Avengers. It's like Roger
Rafa Serena. Yeah, you know, after them, all of a sudden,
(02:51):
you see a surge in tennis. You wouldn't have thought
that that would have been the case, right. But I
think one thing is very significant in this conversation is
that you could play tennis during COVID, right, and people
felt comfortable.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Doing it during COVID, Right.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
So you look at twenty twenty, and then all of
a sudden, the participation rates go through the roof because
you know, we're not having to huddle around each other.
It's not like a basketball, and we're not breathing on
each other, and it's not you know, like all of
these things. But then I think also the product is
so good that you know, you can't you couldn't recreate
a marketing campaign that said, okay, we're going we don't
(03:25):
have anything to do there for tennis is going to
be the option. But I think now what we're seeing
with these rates of people watching. I think with people
continuing to play, is the product is so good at
the professional level that it's retained and turn people who
are participants into fans and then vice versa. So I
think it's almost a two way street now. But I mean,
(03:48):
you hate you say this sensitively because you don't want
to sound opportunistic about a pandemic, right, But I do
think there is a direct effect from what happened in
a silo during COVID, specifically with tennis, and kind of
what we're seeing five years later with people who are
watching and playing.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Interesting. I'm just thinking early two thousands, and I'm putting
myself career wise in the same sort of scenario like
early to mid two thousands. I don't remember relying or
being told to rely on social media for marketing. Do
you think that that's played a role since twenty nineteen
in the sport expanding so much?
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Yeah, I think we're probably in a great spot to
benefit from it. Listen, we're doing this show, and we
do a tennis show a podcast as well, and it's
I mean, as I'm telling you your business, but you
don't need permission to put something out now, right, you
can just do it. Tennis specifically as an individual sport.
(04:46):
You know, you used to have to go to a
journalist and then you hope that they would tell the
story that the.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Way that you wanted it to be told, right, And.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I'm sure it was the same with you when you
were kind of on the on the upswing also, and
now you don't have to worry about a league when
you're saying something. You know, one of my biggest things
is people give me credit for like, okay, you were
you were always honest and press conferences and you would
kind of say whatever, and I say, yeah, but I
wouldn't have if if sixty of my teammates would have
(05:14):
had to answer for what I was saying, I was
the only one that had to answer for what I
was saying, So I'd never blame. And the question is
normally presented as you know, well, the quarterbacks don't tell
us anything. I'm like, yeah, it's not because they don't
want to tell you something. It's because they don't want
the sixty people on their team to have to take
time to respond to what they said. So I think
in all that, just to say I think Tennessee's uniquely
(05:34):
positioned for its athletes to take advantage of whether it's
TikTok or Twitter or you know, whatever else it is
and kind of go directly to fans. I think we're
probably set up to kind of take advantage of modern
media a little bit more.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
That makes sense. Did you play during COVID.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah, I mean I spent that I retired in twenty twelve,
and I didn't really play much, which I say, I
played customer tennis, Like if you do a clinic or
you get paid to go do something, I would do it.
But I didn't really play much tennis after I retired,
and now I play all the time again, but I didn't.
I didn't play much during I didn't play any more
than normal or usual in COVID. And I think that
(06:17):
almost proves the point is like tennis was never going
to lose the people that already played. Yeah, and I
think there was only upside as far as participation given
that that kind of very very very serious and unique
set of circumstances.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
And I know you've talked about this elsewhere, but but
for people who don't know what what's what was the
reason that you had you didn't play for a while,
and then what was the reason for coming back into
enjoying it?
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yeah, there there's no real interest otherwise, you know, other
than I think I was just generally fatigued on it,
you know. And I know that you have had kind
of a bunch of different iterations in your career and
you've I was, I was, I just wasn't curious about
it when I stopped, you know, I think I wanted
a breath, and then we fell in love again, you know,
(06:59):
after a certain amount of time passed. It's like, Okay,
I'm looking I'm forty three, I'm not getting younger. I'm
going do I have ten years of being quasi athletic
and what do I want to be doing with that athleticism?
And then you kind of fall back into this thing
you love again, and then you haven't played for so long,
and you play a.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Little bit more and a little bit more and a
little bit more.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
And some of those familiar feelings come back and it
becomes kind of addictive all over again.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
I mean that's nice though, to be able to be
able to play like you with that feeling that you
had when you were nine.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
I know, and all I want right now is to
go back and be like, gosh, I wonder what I'm
trying to remember what it felt like when I was
twenty four and my body worked.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Unfair comparison, though, Yeah, when I think of tennis recently,
so I watched it growing up. I was not very
good playing it, but you know, enjoyed it. For me,
it was also maybe the last ten years, not just
since COVID, but when I moved to New York and
the US Open is so accessible. Yeah, and ticket prices,
(07:58):
by the way, are so accessible for the Open, and
there are all these activities around the city, especially the
last ten years, and then since COVID. Obviously things in
things in parks where you know, if people didn't feel
comfortable going in proximity to each other, things are spread out.
There's just a lot of love for the for the Open,
but there's also the criticism that I heard from friends
where like, oh, you're into tennis? Was people think of
(08:20):
it with a certain air of inaccessibility, like it's an
elite sport, it's a it's a wealthy man's sport. I
think we definitely lean into that too, like the last Open,
where they're like, oh, if you have one hundred dollars,
you can ge chicken nuggets with caviar and a little champagne.
Like that sounds delaceous, but it kind of reinforces it. Oh,
it's not necessarily for everybody. I think it is for everybody,
(08:41):
and I have plenty of friends in different places who
access it. What's your experience with with that criticism.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Yeah, there's a couple of different pieces there. I'll get
to the US open kind of pricing of things because obviously,
like you can't dispute the caviar and nug Yeah, I
think the biggest disservice we do when combating the narrative
that it's like this upper crust like short white shorts
and a headband thing like our champions. Like think of
(09:09):
the biggest names that you know, like Venus and Serena
are from they played on public courts in Compton, right,
Like Agassi's dad is an immigrant from Iran who worked
the door at Caesar's to pay for his tennis lessons.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Novak Djokovic grew up in.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
War torn Serbia, right, So like it's it's just not
that at the highest level, it's just simply like not
that you know, like the storytelling is is just the
best players haven't been from that. Like my dad was
a farmer from Wisconsin. Like it's just it just doesn't
really exist now that the US Open of things and
(09:47):
like ticket prices and everything else is like if they
don't sell them for a certain price point, they're I mean,
I'm gonna attempt to explain the resale market to everyone
who doesn't need the explanation. But we've had the term
of director of the US Open on it's like, how
do you fund better experiences and get you know, they
have live music with great musicians who have songs on
the radio. Yeah, you charge more for nuggets, right, and
(10:10):
you make the overall experience just lights out and it's
you know, it's like it's like the Oscars of sports. Now,
how do you differentiate from the Mets and the Yankees
and the Nicks And how do you become New York's
own event? It's probably not going to be through subtlety.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Yeah, for sure. Do you remember what made you fall
in love with tennis initially? Like, do you have a
first memory of tennis that made you go, I love
this and I'm good at it?
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Uh, that's kind of a chicken or the egg. I
think I kind of remember this. I don't know if
it's one of those things where you have a memory
of being told it or it's an actual memory. But
we lived in Nebraska and there was a I don't
know that we would have ever played tennis, but my
parents kind of believed in there's value in individual sports, right,
there's accountability. You can't blame someone else. It's not the coach.
(10:56):
It's like they thought there was a very distinct set
of life lessons that existed an individual sport, and then
also that same set of life lessons, maybe different lessons,
but in team sports. And it just so happens. They
lived up the street from a couple indoor tennis courts,
and so back then it wasn't even tennis. It was
like you go and it was babysitting where you like
(11:18):
throwing a tennis ball like a snoopy cutout.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
But I had an older brother.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Who played, and I'm sure similar to you know every
other person ever, you're influenced by proximity of something, right,
like my brother played. Therefore I would tag along, and
so it became familiar to me. I don't remember a
time where I wasn't completely fluent around a tennis court
or a match. And I used to go to you know,
(11:43):
Casual Tennis Center, which is a public facility in Austin, Texas,
where I grew up did most of my growing up.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Maybe jury's still out, but.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
My mom would drop me off in the morning and
I would run pickup games all day, you know, and
I would try to like win money games, and that
was like I was obsessed with that.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
It was so much fun.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
I was the kid in the pro shop who people
would call and say, is that kid there? Yes, And
then I'd have a game and I would play twelve
hours a night, and I loved it. I just couldn't
love it more. I loved I don't know if I
loved the game.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
I don't know. If I loved the hustle. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
But kids are no different than adults, and you kind
of like what you're good at.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
You've mentioned this twice now, the idea that it's an
individual sport. And one of the reasons I really wanted
to talk to you is as someone who's an admirer
of tennis, the psychology around it is also super fascinating
to me. I wrote a book a couple of years ago,
and when I was writing my book, it was one
of those things, it's a memoir, and I'm like, there's
a point that I think every memoir writer, especially if
(12:43):
you're like an actor, athlete or just like not a journalist,
that you reach when you're writing where you like deeply
hate yourself. And so I share this with a couple
of friends and actually one of my friends was like, Oh,
you're writing your book. Do you hate yourself yet? Like? What? No?
So yeah, call me in three months. I called them
three months later. I fucking hate myself.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Tell it.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Tell me about that though, about the hating yourself. I
think in my first it it felt very self indulgent,
like I wanted to write a book because I thought
I had a unique story about about loving you know,
first and foremost, it's comedy and it and it's filmmaking
and TV. And then I, you know, I took this
weird sabbatical for a couple of years and worked and
worked in public service, and so I just thought, oh,
(13:23):
there's actually no, there wasn't a book about uh about
being able to do two things, not that I was
doing them simultaneously, but how do you craft a career
in both, and so I thought, if there's if there's
a funny book that's similar to like a like a
Tina Fey or a Rain Wilson. That's funny first, and
that's that, but that's also got an undercurrent of like,
for the twenty five year old me, this would have
(13:45):
been a cool book. That was my goal, but halfway
through it just felt really self indulgent. The first the
first draft of the first three chapters, I turned into
my editor. She didn't do notes. She just called me
and goes, okay, so you pitched us. You pitched us
a really funny book. I'm like, I did, this is
(14:07):
really dark? Like what because, yeah, there's nothing funny in this.
It's just three chapters of what it was like getting
bullied as a kid. I'm like, yeah, but it's not funny.
She because, no, when you described it to me, it
was funny in are in like your pitch meeting, But
this was not funny. So I'm not gonna give you notes.
I'm just gonna give you another month to redo the
first three chapters.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
It's just gonna give you another try.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah, She's just gonna give you another chance. And I
realized what I was doing wrong was and this is
the part that's like, oh I hate myself, is I
had told those A lot of those stories I had
told before to friends, like over beers, right, so you're
having like four beers with friends and the story just
flows out and it's self deprecating and funny. When it
was just like me and a computer recounting what it
(14:50):
was like being thirteen, like being you know, bullied by
some asshole in like seventh or eighth grade, and it's
just me and the computer, the actor part of my
brain where you're just remembering what that feels like, and
it's and I was writing stuff like and I hope
Gabriel is dead, Like it was just shit. That just
was clearly I had a chip on my shoulder from
when I was thirteen that I hadn't fully resolved. So
(15:13):
that's what I mean by like that, Oh God, I
don't need I don't need a book with my name
on it. I think I just need to go to therapy.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
That's that's interesting because like I've.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
I've never been motivated to do it because I feel
like there are yours sounds like like super interesting as
far as like a very unique lane, but like books
are either it's like your greatest hits or you're telling
on someone else.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Yes, the book that was recommended to me while I
was in my funk of writing, and I actually took
a break from writing. I wrote most of the book
during COVID, but a friend of mine recommended Agasy's book open. Ugh,
So that doesn't either of the things that you were
(16:00):
talking about. And that book hit me obviously. It's about
the types of pressures that tennis players face in a
particularly individual sport. But it hit me as an actor
because I'm not comparing the two obviously, but like you're
kind of on your own, Like we have teams, of course,
but at the end of the day, if you don't
nail that audition or if you don't nail your part
(16:21):
in your project, it's kind of only on you. So
Agassi's book just made me immediately. I made that comparison
because I think I needed it at that particular time
in my writing. But it also then it was like
the aha of like, oh, yeah, this is not basketball
or soccer or baseball. I mean, I know agassi story
from reading the book, but can you walk me through
(16:43):
for you what happens mentally? Like when you prepare for
a match, when you step into a court, from the
difficulty to like staying focused or the discipline, like how
do you even enter that space? And then you started
when you were young, right, so I assume the pressures
(17:04):
grow as you get better.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Yeah, I can't possibly not talk about Andre's book with
you before I get to my own experiences. But so
there's there's two parts. There's two good stories. So my
wife read it and we were we had been together
a couple of years at that point. I don't I
think we were maybe engaged, but not married, right, And
(17:27):
like when I was playing, to your point, like with
the pressures, I was, I'm not often in a bad mood,
and even if I am now I can make a
joke about being in a bad mood. Whereas when I played,
it was like it was like the emotions were dictated
by things, you know, the anxiousness or the.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Match or whatever it was.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Anyways, so my wife read his book when it came out,
and it was actually a couple of months before it
came out. He sent us and I'll tell you that
story because it's just Andrea in a in a nutshell.
But she read it and she goes, I think I
understand you better from having read his book.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Like, and so the example I was going to give
before you actually mentioned that you had read it was Andre.
It wasn't a greatest hits album. He like skipped over
the successes and then threw himself under the bus, which
is why I thought it was a captivating read.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
It wasn't others.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
It was like he went against the two rules of
what most books are. But I'll also tell you like
his awareness of like humans, which most people at his
level where you're like, you know, Mount Rushmore of whatever
you do, forget these little parts of kind of humanity.
He had retired two years earlier, obviously, Like if you
(18:44):
haven't read this book, it is loaded with like bombshell
revelations that we didn't really know. Like I knew Andre personally,
and I didn't know that he was like in his
living room smoking meth in nineteen ninety seven, like and
we we were. He was my idol, like he was
my mentor, like huge, huge moments. And he called me
like two months before its release and he said, hey, listen,
(19:07):
there's a lot of stuff in this book. He goes,
what I don't want is for it to come out
on day one. You have, you know, been a I
don't know where you're going to be. Let's say you're Wimbledon.
Obviously you're not going to carve out six hours to
read a book. He goes, I don't want you on
your heels when someone says, you know what about Andre
and Meth He goes, So I'm going to send you
(19:28):
the book, not because I want to coach any responses
or you know I He goes, I'm here if you
want an explanation as my friend and as someone who
we you know, we've had a relationship. But he goes,
what I don't want is for you to just be
blindsided by any questions, because you're probably going to be
the first person that gets asked about it. And I
thought that was like very thuugh.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
As far as like the mental side of tennis, I'll
tell you like having some distance from those days now,
I've heard like I had a dear friend, Marty Fish,
who has an unbelievable documentary on and if you're interested
in this, like this is you have to watch this.
Marty Fish is a dear friend of mine. He got
(20:09):
up to seven in the world in tennis. He's like
the kind of guy that like, is seven in the
world in tennis, he's a plus seven handicap in golf.
He goes and takes batting practice at you know, major
league ballparks and hits like twelve homers in batting practice.
He's just like that guy who's kind of good at everything.
But in his own words, he got to a point
where the mental ask of tennis kind of of you know,
(20:33):
broke him, you know, to the point where you know,
he would have these anxiety attacks and it was you know, physical,
and then it was mental, and then it was back
to physical, and then it was mental, and it was
like and we don't know, you know, what was going
to start at any point, to the point where like
he didn't want to get on an airplane. It basically
ends he was on his way to the courts. He
(20:53):
was playing Federer in a fourth round of the US
Open and was what you know, he was with his
wife in a car ride to the US Open. He's like,
I don't know how I'm gonna do it. I have
to go out there, and I just can't. Like he
was spiraling a little bit and she goes, no, you
don't like you don't have to go out there like
this is gotten to the point where it's like an
(21:13):
actual serious like this is this is not healthy. But
you look at these you know, athletes, and you think
they're like superheroes, and then it's like they're very human.
They're just you know, a lot of times we're just
faking it. And when he explains a lot of what
he was going through, it's weird because I think I
(21:35):
had normalized a lot of the experiences of tennis. It's like, oh,
you know, an hour before your match, when the match
before you, all of a sudden, someone else wins the
four said and it's not finished, and you know that
you have another hour, and then your brain goes to, okay,
I need some fuel, but I can't have a full meal.
Like all these little, like miniature decisions where it's like
(21:55):
I had this association where to this day, if I
taste a banana on its own, I have like this
reflex of like I'm gonna throw up because that was
like my nervous food. Oh yeah, like that was what
I ate because I didn't want to have to like
chew through something more solid, but I don't. That was
just normal, Like I didn't realize that was kind of
fucked up for a long time. And I think the
(22:16):
isolated nature of tennis is just insane, Like there's like
even having a caddie to talk to or you know,
someone else who's in on the decision is something that
I can't even wrap my head around. The other thing
that kind of always gets a reaction is like, think
about walking in on Day one of the US Open. Right,
(22:37):
there's one hundred and twenty eight singles players. There's hundreds
of more doubles players, so you're looking at like three
hundred people in a locker room. You're stepping over bags
like you're just there's people everywhere. You're like sliding in
between conversations. There's there's no room to operate. Right, So
then that field, you're watching it through the course of
two weeks. If things go well, you're watching that locker
(22:58):
room get cut in half every day.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
It's like squid game. Oh wow, right yeah, after round one.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
One sixty four like gone, and then all of a sudden,
if you make it far enough, you're in the final
in just two weeks. Earlier, it was like Grand Central
Station at five point fifteen in the evening and then
you walk in and you walk past the only person
that's going to be in the way from like a
legacy defining moment potentially, and it's like a man, it's
(23:24):
like okay, but it's just so, and it's it's just
like quiet, and it's only your team, and it's just
how the kind of event transforms over the course of
two weeks as far as the way you experience it
and the way it affects like emotions is wild.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
At those times, do you connect with other players about
what you're going through? Like, for example, when actors are
on press tours, you recognize that you know, you're a
You're in a different city every day and a half,
sometimes two cities a day. You love this because you're
promoting a film that you got the chance. There's no
(24:01):
reality in which the stresses of that are a thing
that I can call my college buddies to vent about.
That's just not gonna happen. Like, Oh, you're complaining because
you're starting in a movie and you got to go
to thirty cities to promote it. Right, I'm just not
gonna do that. I know that I can't do that.
I also don't have the time. If I'm in that
zone to like do an hour with a therapist, there's
(24:23):
that hour is not there in the schedule. So you
end up relying on other actors who understand that you
have this immense privilege, but it's also just this psychologically
insane place to be. What do you have any equivalent
of that at when you're in there? Or is it
other players, is it coaches or is it truly nobody?
Speaker 3 (24:42):
It's former players, okay.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
And then also like the better you get, the narrower
the silo of relatable knowledge is, right, Like, someone who
is eighty in the world is one of the best
in the world out their jobs, and I can't talk
to them about how to navigate the last four players
in the tournament, right because they haven't done it. They
don't know, they don't play on stadium ever. And so
(25:07):
to your point, I ended up midway through my career,
I hired Jimmy Connors, legend, legendary Jimmy Connors, and he
wasn't even around the game at that point. Like he
was he basically made the US Open mainstream. He won
it five times on three different surfaces. Like you couldn't
take your eyes off of him. The first time I
(25:29):
saw him play, I was nine, and he turned he
turned a stadium into like a rock show or theater
with like he would tell people to get up and
they got up. I'm like, God, this guy has control
over all these humans and their emotions from playing tennis.
And now I brought him back in fourteen years after
anyone had seen him, and I was like, listen, I
know the players. I'm twenty five at this point. I
(25:51):
don't have a problem showing up to practice. You don't
have to babysit me. I like to wake up early.
I'm not going to go out the night before, like
we don't have to do any of these things.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
I go.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
I need you because I'm going to have insecure questions
maybe twice during the tournament, where like I'm worried and
I need to know that the person I'm talking to
understands what I'm saying, not the words that I'm saying,
but the feelings that I'm that I'm that I'm saying,
And so it becomes like a very narrow group. And
I think you've seen that trend now more and more
(26:22):
with with kind of players leading on former players. Nobody
active because you can't be insecure and you can't point
out your own weaknesses to someone you might play the
next week.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Right.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Marty was my like one of my best friends on Earth,
and he lived at our house in high school, and
he was going through this whole ordeal, and he didn't
share a lot of it with me. You know, he
would say, Hey, I had a little thing. I had
to go to the hospital last night, but everything's fine.
We were still on tour together. There was every chance
that what he told me in March I would still
(26:53):
have knowledge of if we played in the semi finals
of the US Open four or five six months later.
You know, maybe that's a little bit different than an
actor because you guys are on projects together, but it's
not as if that person can ruin you head to
head at least knowingly or like knowingly kind of expose
those insecurities or weaknesses. So it almost has to be
(27:14):
a former player.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
That's yeah. I hadn't thought about that extra level of
isolation that you experienced. There are a lot of elite
tennis players now who have been more outspoken about Yeah,
mental health, right, Naomi Osaka, Marty Fish Alcarez. When you
see them expressing these challenges. What runs through your mind?
Speaker 2 (27:35):
I wish the culture had been different sooner and they
all act a little bit differently, like Marty's was.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
It's always weird because.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
I get, like, you get asked about naomio Osaka from
someone who doesn't really follow much, and they're like, why, Like,
she gets nervous about going into press, right, Yeah, the
thing that causes her anxiety is the tennis a little bit.
But I would guess that seventy or eighty percent of
the mental fatigue load that she's caring is because she
(28:07):
has to go talk about it.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Afterwards, and that's not who she is.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
And so people say like, oh, she's mentally weak because
she can't even go to press. I'm like, motherfucker, Like
she she's won four out of four Grand Slam finals
and you're telling me that I'm mentally tough because I
can go make fart jokes in a press conference like that.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
That's ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Like when you have these guys like I think of
Simone Biles and people are like, oh, she's got the
twisties like they're making it. I'm like, you're, I go,
You're you're like in front of a microphone talking shit
about someone who like risks breaking their neck every time
she jumps off of something and is having a rough
go yeah right, Like it's just it's just weird how
we define mental toughness and poke holes in it. But
(28:51):
I'm glad that now, like Alcaaz saying, yeah, I just
struggled today.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
I was a lie. I was like a.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Little anxious, nervous, I don't know. But then the the
superpower is that like once you say it and it's like, okay,
he's gonna tell us what he's feeling. But then fast
forward like six months later when he's about to play
the finals of Wimbled and he goes, yeah, I feel
pretty good.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
You're like, oh shit.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
It's like, oh no, no, because he would tell us
if he wasn't.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Like this is like he's gonna he's gonna drill all
of us.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
That's amazing. Also amazing, there's a there's a there's a
script version of this where it's all just mind games
on purpose, Like he was fine the whole time. He
just wanted to play mind games with everybody else.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
I talked with a player who's like a top ten player,
you know. I talked to a lot of players kind
of in in confidence and secretly. But one of the
things that I told him was like, yeah, if you're early,
like the book on you is X, I go, if
you're up a couple sets, do something that's crazy, someone
will video it and then just talk about it, impress
and it changes like the entire dynamic of style. I
(29:52):
go to your point, I go, you can you can
sell your own shit.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
If you need to. You have the microphone.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Yeah, so there there that that is a like that's
a real.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Oper Can you walk me through how you mentally prepared
for the two thousand and three Open, which which you want?
Speaker 2 (30:15):
That one was so they all kind of act differently
based on Like that was fast because that tournament had
been backed up because of rain and it was before
the roof, Like there was a lot of space between.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
So I played four.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Matches in like four and a half days basically, so
it was like a race to the finish, So there
wasn't a lot of like I don't know if it's
like when you know that you have the most critical
scene in anything you're doing and you have three days
off to think about it. That's probably for me that
would seem worse like it's like I'm gonna, you know,
get in my own head or I'm gonna overthink it,
or so the reality of the Open was I want
(30:52):
a five setter save to match point in the semis
Well finished it because Andrea played the first match because
he was Andre and he got to do what he
wanted for the TV audience, and so I played the
second one and finished at like seven pm.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
So as soon as that.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Match ends, you're in a race for a four o'clock
tip off the next day. Right, It's like I got
a I just played you know, four hours in a
New York summer.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
I have to get you know, my footspad. I have
to get food in me.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
And it was almost a gift as long as my
body was healthy enough to play that I didn't actually
have enough time to sit around and think of all
the things that could go wrong.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
So it was, it was, it was.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
It was very interesting, but just generally, I was very
attached to routine, right, Like I wanted to have the
same you can control when you warm up. It's like
I wanted to be able to eat in a certain pocket.
I wanted to, you know, I needed an element of
control in a world where almost everything was out of
(31:51):
my control up until we went on. So I was
very diligent about like the same routine, eating at the
same three restaurants, you know, kind of keep being. I
wanted to make things feel smaller while I was playing,
and so it was all the same drinks, it was
the same you know. I was very My team knew
I wanted this done a certain way at a certain time,
(32:12):
and that was almost like my binkie, right, that was
like my It was like giving a kid a pacifier.
But I slept fine, and it's weird. That was a
training ground. I ended up playing four of the five
Slam finals that I played on a rain delay with
no time in between. It was only the last one
I played ever that I actually had a day off
in between, which was the worst day ever. Like all
I did was I feel like I was going to
(32:33):
vomit all day.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Your analogy about having three days off before a big
scene is correct because both a I would love I
love having three days off before a massive scene, but
also it results in me overthinking absolutely everything until I
show up to work. But thankfully we have directors, so
that's who I rely on. When you hit that one
hundred and fifty five mile per hour serve at the
(32:56):
Davis Cup seventy finals was the I guess that the
like that psychology of it's an individual sports. So do
you just walk off and are you like, hell, yeah,
I meant to do that, or are you secretly shocked?
Like what? What? What goes into mastering something like that?
Speaker 2 (33:13):
There's no difference as far as feeling if you hit
it one forty six or one fifty five, like it's like,
oh that came off hot, what was it? But honestly,
like hitting it hard is almost like a party trick.
Like it's not it's you don't like write things down.
It's like I want to hit us serve harder than
anyone like you just you know, I'd give up that record. Mean,
(33:35):
I don't want to be there, but like that meant
nothing to me. It was it's it's fun for like
your teammates at Davis Cup you walk off and they're
like holy shit, man, you know, but it's it's not
anything that's like super serious.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
So it's the NTV Movie Award of Tennis.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Correct.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
In previous interviews, you've talked a lot about how tennis
is a great sport. But it's also very brutal. What
are the most brutal aspects for for fans who don't understand,
especially now that you've got this this huge uptick in
the last six years of people who are watching the sport.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
So I always like to make kind of comparisons from
you know, meet people where they are. So if you're
like an NFL fan, yeah, and I'll watch the like
the Sunday Countdown, It's like, oh man, that that like
they had to travel west, they had to go to
the HA to go the West coast. Start is rough,
and I'm like, fuck man, so is like Saturday in
Memphis and Tuesday in Dubai. You know that's It's it's
(34:25):
the NonStop nature of traveling every week and playing forty
weeks a year. Like the season never stops. You start
your off season mid November, maybe late November, and then
you play through a week before that, so it never
really stops. The challenges change over time. You know, when
you're eighteen and you know you've lived in Nebraska and
(34:47):
Texas and all of a sudden you go to Europe
somewhere and the food is not the same and you
can't understand anything, and like there. So there's like the
traveling challenges early, but then just being isolated. You know,
you have your team, you know, it's like you have
your group of friends. It's like high school over again,
like you are friends with the people that you know
talk about the same stuff you do.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
You know.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
There's not a lot of Slovakians who care much about
how the SEC title.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Game went, you know.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
So it's it's just the isolated nature. You never get
a break, and there's not as if like, hey, if
I can just push through this, I have the ability
to breathe for like four months.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
It just it just doesn't exist.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
And I always tell the story just to give context
for like, and it's one example of kind of atmosphere
and circumstance. So the Australian Open used to be played
on a surface that was called rebound ace, and if
you stepped on.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
It, it felt like like.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
A spongey type rubber a most right. And so to
get on center court at the Australian Open, you would
walk down five steps and then walk up three steps.
You'd kind of stand in the bottom right and there
was like a you know, I don't know, size of
a table or something, and then when you announce, you
would walk up three steps, but when you were eye
level with the court down five steps, you could see
(36:05):
like the water bubbles that you would see in like
a desert, you know, if you were like you like
wanted your last drop of water, and you would smell
the court and its smell like burning tires. And so
the on court temperatures in Australia, so whatever, if it's
one hundred and seven outside, the on court temperature of
baking rubber is like one hundred and forty seven degrees,
(36:27):
and so you have to wrap your brain around, Okay,
it smells like tires. This is going to be the
worst four hours of my life. And every time you
do that, you have to be prepared to play six hours.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Right, it might not get there.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
You might win in an hour and forty five minutes,
but just like the mental fuckery of walking out there
knowing that, like you're going to go to this like
extreme place and it's not an extreme place where it's
it's not like a marathon where it's like the goal
is to finish right, and it's you you know what
the race looks like. It's like all these mental decisions
where you don't know that you're running twenty seven. Mind,
(37:00):
you don't know where it's going to go. You don't
know what the person's going to do, you don't know
how they're feeling, you don't have a real so's it's
like all of this unknown with one hundred and forty
seven degrees and burning tires like that. That's one tournament,
and every tournament kind of has a set of circumstances
in that in that realm, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
That's wild. And the schedule piece of it, I guess
I didn't even look at it as a as a
calendar from the perspective of a player. The closest thing
this even sounds I'm a big NASCAR fan, So the
closest thing it sounds like is those guys have like
I think six weeks off a year for six weeks
something like that. But even in the off season, you're
still you know, you're still doing your getting. I can't
(37:38):
imagine looking out knowing that temperature and the smell part
of it. I mean, you tell that so well. We
obviously we would never have any idea the different temperature
and the smell.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
There's like these little moments where like, Okay, you're walking
through air, conditioning, and then you get to the part
where there's an opening, so you feel that first gust
of like it feels like a like a like a
hair dryer, yeah, like if you were to hold it
in front of you, because the wind goes through there.
And then there's like it's like a general progression of
oh fuck, because like you're walking out there, you know
it's gonna suck and there's gonna be a huge, massive
time stuck of your day that has like consequence and
(38:09):
you could be on a plane the next day, yeah,
going home, right, And then it's like the first time
you walk out and then the heat hits you and
you like are like baking, and so there's all these
these like little parts of like whatever our battle is
that maybe don't get told once the once the camera
hits and it's you know, it's so the country club
(38:30):
narrative isn't.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
Quite there for me.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
The other thing you mentioned was like NASCAR is insane
and they're risking they're literally risking their lives every time
they go to work. So I can't imagine the stressors
of that or getting hit in the head by an
NFL lineman. I will say a Grand Slam we're not
dealing with like you know, blunt force trauma, right, but
doing it you have to do what I just explained
(38:54):
seven times in fourteen days.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
That's insane. You have said before that in retirement one
thing you won't do is coach. Why not?
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Uh? You never say never.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
I The thing about tennis is like, I don't know
if there's common ground of like you get an offer
to do an unreal movie on someone else's terms, and
it takes a year and a half of life, Like
I like, I really like my wife, she likes me
most days. I like, I really like my kids. It
(39:29):
would be one of those things where I've gotten calls
from like unlike dream opportunities with brains that I want
to work with, with games that I would love to
like have a say in, and they'd go, oh, I
don't even need you full time, I just need you
for like three months, and I'm going, okay, so two things.
Three months for me is like every moment with with
(39:50):
with life, Like I left tennis and I haven't really
I'm I'm now back, but I'm in a studio in
my hometown right now talking to you, and that's.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
Where I go to work. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
So and I and I watch everything on stream and
everything else. Three months doesn't sound like a lot to
anyone else. And then if you did well in those
three months, and let's say you came up one match
short as a team at like Wimbledon, I know my
first reaction be like, fuck it, we got to do
six months. We got to get over this hump. Like
And I feel like it's like the It's like the
string on a sweater where you pull it a little
(40:18):
bit at a time and then all of a sudden
you're just holding a ball full of string.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Yeah, I mean that makes sense. How would you describe
your relationship with tennis now?
Speaker 3 (40:26):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
I respect it more now than I did when I played.
I think the thirty thousand foot view of tennis does
it a lot of favors.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
I appreciate the.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
Ability to talk about it and to explain it in detail,
because I feel like people, if you give them the
chance and you're not screaming at them, can really actually
understand details.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
It's a psychotic thing.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Man Like I go to the US Open and I sit,
you know, all the way up and there's just these
two like small humans down on there. They look small
from where you're sitting down on court exposed. People are
having the best time ever in the suite next to
them with fancy outfits, and it's just like there's like
two gladiators out there, like not concerned with any good
(41:10):
time that anyone's having, just trying to get a result.
I love tennis now as much as I ever have.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
That's awesome. Congratulations, cheers, Thank you. Andy Rottick is a
former professional tennis player. He holds thirty two titles, including
the US Open, and currently hosts the podcast Served with
Andy Rottick. Here We Go Again as a production of
iHeart Podcasts and Snaffoo Media in association with New Metric Media.
(41:39):
Our executive producers are me kalpen ed Helms, Mike Falbo,
Alissa Martino, Andy Kim, Pat Kelly, Chris Kelly, and Dylan Fagan.
Megan tan is our producer and writer. Dave Shumka is
our producer and editor. Our consulting producer is Romin Borsolino.
Tory Smith is our associate producer. Theme music by Chris Kelly,
logo by Matt Legal, review from Daniel Welsh, Caroline Johnson
(42:03):
and Meghan Halson. Special thanks to Glenn Bassner, Isaac Dunham,
Adam Horn, Lane Klein, and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but
especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman and Nikki Etoor. Thanks for listening. Everybody,
tell your friends, write a review. All of this helps.
I appreciate you listening, and until we go again, I'm
Kelpen
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