adminEARLIER this year as Serena Williams was attempting to complete the Grand Slam at the U.S. Open, her childhood friend – and the 2003 U.S. Open men’s champion – Andy Roddick expressed excitement that Williams was finally getting the support he felt she deserved. Williams has been a dominating force in tennis since she turned pro in 1995, establishing herself as potentially the best female tennis player of all time. But it wasn’t until her historic run at the majors this year where he felt that fans had warmed to Williams.
Roddick pointed out the irony in all of this. Sure, Williams has lost her composure on the court, but then again, so did Roddick. And Williams has been far more successful than Roddick, winning 21 Grand Slam singles titles to Roddick’s lone title in Flushing Meadows.
“We thew a lot of fits on the court,” Roddick said in an August interview with Observer. “I was a [jerk] a lot of the time, and I didn’t get a quarter of the criticism that she ever got.”
This season was perhaps the finest in the 34-year-old Williams’s career, and one that should be recognized with the Sports Illustrated 2015 sportsman of the year, Roddick wrote Tuesday in a column.
She surpassed Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova in overall major singles titles and is closing in on Steffi Graf. She was one win away from becoming the first player since Graf in 1988 to win all four Grand Slams in a calendar year. Even as her rivals have long since retired, Williams continues to compete and win against the current crop of top players.
And don’t penalize Williams just because she’s been good for so long, Roddick argued.
“The story of Serena Williams’s 2015 season is not new and it’s not shiny,” he wrote. “There was a lot of sentiment around the U.S. women’s national team and (Carli) Lloyd specifically this year – which there should have been – but that’s kind of what Serena does every year. That’s what she’s done for 16 years now.”
Roddick said the French Open was Williams’s most impressive victory this year. She rallied from a set down four times to the reach the final. Roddick equated the wins to a pitcher who got by for years on throwing 98-mph fastballs having to mix up their game after losing the velocity in their pitches.
“She’s kind of learned how to pitch a good ballgame,” he said. Roddick, 33, says he spoke with Williams a few weeks ago at his home and gets that sense that Williams is as motivated as ever to play tennis – which should concern her opponents. Williams is still “marching to the record books,” he noted.
The two still laugh about how Williams beat Roddick when the two were kids in Delray Beach, Fla. “I had to literally run around in the shower to get wet; I was this big,” Roddick has joked. “She was bench-pressing dump trucks already at that time.”
But Roddick turns serious when talking about just how much Williams has achieved and how those accomplishments are taken for granted. Maybe an honor like the sportsman of the year would make up for it.
“Serena gets viewed a little differently. I think we take the story for granted,” Roddick wrote. “I think we’re going to look back in 20 years and realize everything that went into her career and her accomplishments. I wish that people would appreciate it in the moment a little more and not just take it for granted. And that’s why this year, I believe Serena Williams deserves SI’s Sportsman of the Year award.” –Washington Post.
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