How Andy Roddick Returned To The Center Of The Tennis Universe

When Andy Roddick was approached by Ben Stiller to seem in a film he was producing, a few tennis professional who takes up pickleball, the previous world No. 1 turned down the award-winning actor and producer. Repeatedly. “Athlete cameos in movies are normally horrendous,” Roddick says. “I said no to him probably four or five times.”

But this function was no cameo, Stiller defined, and the film actually couldn’t be made with out Roddick embodying the protagonist’s childhood tennis rival, who finally faces off in opposition to him within the climactic pickleball match. The guilt journey labored, and Roddick lastly agreed to star alongside Jake Johnson in The Dink, which premiered on Apple TV this summer season.

The film is just one piece of the 43-year-old Tennis Hall of Famer’s reemergence into the general public eye, after greater than a decade when he was seldom seen or heard from. Roddick additionally appeared within the commentary field and on the analyst desk for ESPN for the primary time at Wimbledon in July, and he’ll return for the U.S. Open this month, all whereas internet hosting his twice-weekly present Served, which he has grown into arguably the preferred tennis podcast on the planet. Forbes estimates the present generated roughly $4 million in promoting income over the previous yr—a lot of which matches straight into Roddick’s pocket, together with practically $1 million in estimated earnings from his mixed TV and movie work.

“I was always busy in the ten years I was away from the game, so I don’t know that it was a conscious thing,” Roddick tells Forbes of his return to the highlight. “I think it was more just a snowball effect, and I’ve just enjoyed the stuff I’ve done along the way.”

Considering his crossover into mainstream fame within the 2000s—full with celeb relationships, SNL internet hosting gigs and “Got Milk?” commercials—a second profession in tennis media would have appeared like a pure match after Roddick abruptly introduced his retirement in 2013, on his thirtieth birthday. But at the moment, podcasting was not but a viable media class, and Roddick was adamant that he wasn’t going to observe the ATP Tour round as a TV persona, having burnt out on the worldwide journey schedule. He was additionally struggling beneath the burden of carrying monikers like “One Slam Wonder” and “last American male to win a Grand Slam” that had caught to him since his triumph on the 2003 U.S. Open and his 4 subsequent losses in Grand Slam finals to Roger Federer.

“TV is not something I thought I would ever do,” says Roddick, who gained 32 tour-level singles titles and completed within the high ten of the ATP rankings for 9 straight years, raking in additional than $20 million in profession prize cash. “Back then, it was hard for me to negotiate the mental gymnastics of convincing myself to go sit in a commentary box when I knew I could probably still be out there playing.”

Instead, Roddick retreated from public view. He invested in industrial actual property, ran a basis and targeted on his younger youngsters, shifting the household to Charlotte, North Carolina, to be nearer to his spouse’s household. When he was approached for a profile in GQ across the twentieth anniversary of his Grand Slam win, it was his spouse—the mannequin and actress Brooklyn Decker—who needed to speak him into it. “What’s your deal?” he remembers her saying. “It’s OK to remind people you’re alive.”

Roddick’s vanishing act was so convincing that when he befriended Mike Hayden within the pickup line at their youngsters’s preschool, Hayden’s spouse had no concept who he was. “She’s like, Andy who?” Hayden recollects. But Hayden noticed Roddick’s potential and provided to mix his years of expertise working in sports activities tv with Roddick’s tennis data to create a video podcast. After just a few glasses of wine one evening, they ordered $5,000 value of apparatus off Amazon and determined to offer it a strive.

Launched in January 2024, Roddick’s present crammed a gap within the tennis media ecosystem, the place most evaluation is historically reserved for 30-second spots on stay TV and most gamers can be found for only some minutes throughout press conferences. Roddick’s stature as a former world No. 1, mixed with co-host Jon Wertheim’s journalistic bona fides from Sports Illustrated and 60 Minutes, allowed the present to buck conference on each fronts. The enterprise acquired an early bump when the Tennis Channel licensed the present on cable, and shortly it grew too giant for Roddick and Hayden to handle alone.

“I don’t know anything about sales,” Hayden says. “I had to Google ‘DAI’ [dynamic ad insertion] when people were saying it in meetings.”

In late 2024, the present signed with the Vox Media Podcast Network for advert gross sales and distribution, and when tennis legend Rafael Nadal joined for a March 2025 episode in his first long-form dialog after retiring, the present “went kablooey,” Roddick says. Served grew from lower than $1 million in advert gross sales in its first yr to greater than $2 million in Year 2, in accordance with Forbes estimates.

As with most top podcasters, Roddick maintained possession of his present—Hayden and Wertheim every have a stake as properly—and licensed it to Vox in change for an upfront minimal assure and a break up of the advert income. But becoming a member of a bigger community, particularly one which didn’t focus on tennis, led to new complications. Because advert gross sales needed to run by means of the Vox workforce, Roddick couldn’t bundle collectively his private endorsements and appearances with media advert buys, which might create the sort of scale that pulls bigger manufacturers. The partnership additionally restricted his capacity to launch new exhibits on the identical podcast feed, which Roddick needed to do.

After some negotiation, the 2 sides determined to terminate their two-year settlement lower than a yr in. By then, nonetheless, the Served workforce had some income it might reinvest, and in time it employed two gross sales roles and launched a spin-off present hosted by former Grand Slam champion Kim Clijsters.

Revenue doubled once more in Year 3, and the community now averages 2.2 million downloads and views per 30 days, with half of that viewers coming from outdoors the United States, in accordance with Hayden. Roddick has begun to map out a future by which Served Media homes a number of exhibits, newsletters and different content material choices.

“The numbers we’re talking about now is bananas for just a fun little garage show that’s kind of turned into a tennis thing,” Roddick says. “In 2026, it’s still growing. I don’t know that I thought that was possible.”