ALL ANDY RODDICK WANTED for his ninth birthday was a trip from his home in Austin, Texas, to New York to watch his tennis heroes play at the U.S. Open. He got his wish, traveling with his parents, Blanche and Jerry, to New York, and riding the No. 7 subway decked out in his tennis togs to the USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, Queens. Fourteen years later, on August 30, Roddick is set to celebrate his 23rd birthday at the U.S. Open, but this time, he will be among the favorites to win the tournament.
Back in 1991, American men’s tennis had arguably reached its zenith. “I was lucky,” Roddick says. “I grew up following probably the best tennis generation from one country ever.” In addition to Jim Courier — who knocked off a remarkably resurgent 39-year-old Jimmy Connors in the semifinals before losing the title match to Sweden’s Stefan Edberg — Roddick rooted for countrymen John McEnroe, Michael Chang, Pete Sampras, and Andre Agassi. Of that group, only Agassi remains an active player, though at 35 he’s Methuselah in a sport that adores teenagers. Today, most of the best men’s players hail from other countries.
“American tennis fans have been spoiled since the Open era began [in 1968],” says Roddick, who at press time was ranked No. 2 in the world. “We’ve always had three or four guys at the top challenging for Grand Slam titles. Right now it’s myself and Andre.”
Even Roddick, only two years past becoming fully legal and liable, is already considered one of the “older guys” in the pro tennis world. He and top-ranked Swiss sensation Roger Federer, himself getting on at 24, are being aced in the media by a pair of precocious 19-year-olds, Rafael Nadal of Spain (this year’s French Open champion) and Richard Gasquet of France.
“I’ve become part of the ‘established group,’ or whatever we are,” Roddick observes, “and now there’s a whole younger generation that people want to know about. It’s definitely weird, because until this year, I’ve always been one of the younger generation.”
Not surprisingly, like a lot of tennis phenoms, Roddick was barely out of diapers when he started swinging a racquet at age 3. A year later his family moved from Omaha, Neb., to Austin, and when Roddick was 10 they relocated to Boca Raton, Fla. Yet his youth wasn’t sacrificed to Florida’s tennis factories. He obviously took the game seriously, but he also made the varsity basketball team at Boca Prep Academy. “I played pretty much every sport growing up,”he recalls, admitting that if he could wake up tomorrow a superstar in any other sport, it would be baseball.
In 2000, Roddick finished a stunning debut season on the ATP Tour, becoming the youngest player (18 years, 3 months) in the Top 200 and the No. 1 junior in the world. He captured the Junior Grand Slam titles at the Australian and U.S. Opens without dropping a set and reached the quarterfinals in the French Open. In 2001, he cracked the ATP Top 20 after winning three ATP tournaments, and he made the Top 10 in 2002 on the strength of two titles.
When he arrived at the 2003 U.S. Open, all eyes were on Roddick, and not just because he was a 6-foot-2-inch, 190-pound tennis stud with rock-star good looks. The right-hander had reached the semis in both the Australian Open and Wimbledon — and hit a record-setting 155 mph on the radar gun with one of his rocket serves. After a thrilling semifinal match, he defeated Spain’s Juan Carlos Ferrero for the title. He finished the 2003 season as the youngest U.S. male singles player (21 years, 2 months) to ever rank No. 1 in the world — and ranked as one of People magazine’s Sexiest Men Alive.
While Roddick enjoys the tradition at Wimbledon, no Grand Slam event quite compares to the one hosted in New York. “It’s like Monday Night Football meets tennis,” he says. “I get an amazing amount of support from the crowd. They’re sports fans first and foremost, and then they’re coming to watch tennis. It turns into a rowdy, electric atmosphere. There’s nothing like it for me.”
Nor for his parents. Mom and Dad have returned to New York every year since 1991, always riding the No. 7 train to Flushing Meadows. Nowadays, however, there’s a little more at stake than a 9-year-old’s wishes. Come the finals on September 11, the Roddicks hope their grown-up boy gets a shiny new trophy as a belated birthday present.
— Bob Woods
Continental is the official airline of the U.S. Open, a USTA event.
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Cleveland rocks. The city on the lake is where the term rock and roll was popularized (by radio DJ Alan Freed). It’s also been the homebase of acts like the O’Jays, Joe Walsh, Chrissie Hynde (of the Pretenders), and Bobby Womack. No wonder Cleveland was chosen to be the site of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.
This summer, the House That Rock Built is celebrating its 10th birthday with a concert and special exhibits that will showcase just how much the institution has evolved since its doors first opened to the public on September 5, 1995.
“The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is a combination of history, entertainment, and education,” explains Terry Stewart, the hall’s president and chief executive officer. “With our special exhibits and our ever-changing core exhibits, it’s a place that you can come spend a day or three days, and it’s a place that you can come back to several years later and be surprised by how much it’s changed and how much new material we’ve compiled.”
The 150,000-square-foot building was intended by its designer, renowned architect I.M. Pei, to be a dramatic landmark that would “echo the energy of rock and roll.” With nearly every inch of space in the facility used for some form of exhibit — look up into the rafters of the lobby and you’ll see cars from U2’s Zooropa tour — it’s clear that the end result has borne out Pei’s goal.
Today, in addition to the permanent exhibits that trace the history of rock and roll, visitors to the museum can browse around Tommy: The Amazing Journey, an exhibit that details the many incarnations of the Who’s rock opera; The Genius of Ray Charles; and Listen to the Music, a retrospective exhibit that details the evolution of personal audio from the phonograph to the MP3 player. There is also a Hall of Fame wing built to celebrate the artists who have been inducted since the first ceremony in 1986.
The museum will celebrate its first decade with a concert on September 24 that promises to rival the spectacle of the one that celebrated its opening. That show featured artists ranging from Bruce Springsteen and Sheryl Crow to Chuck Berry and Johnny Cash. While the lineup for next month’s concert was not finalized at press time, it should underscore the many changes that have affected both the museum and music itself in such a short period of time.
— Martin Lieberman
