Andy Roddick

In 2009, Roddick got married to American model and actress Brooklyn Danielle Decker in Austin, Texas. He first saw Decker on the CNN’s Sports Illustrated website called She Says Z Says and he arranged a meeting with her through his agent.

Andy Roddick was born in Omaha, Nebraska to Blanche and Jerry Roddick. His father was a rich business man and his mother was a schoolteacher. His older brothers Lawrence and John were into tennis and their parents supported it.

When he was young, everyone in his family was convinced that he would either become an actor or a baseball player as Andy apparently had the talent and courage to pull off any career for himself. At 5, he moved to Florida with his family.

His brothers used to practice tennis in their backyard but soon Lawrence got more interested in competitive driving and Andy started playing tennis with John. In 1991, his parents took him to the U.S. Open in New York.

In 1996, Reebok signed Andy to play in its junior program and he won six world singles and seven doubles titles but he soon started to lose matches due to physiological changes and he thought of quitting tennis.

In 1999, with encouragement from his coach Tarik Benhabiles, Roddick concentrated on tennis and became the No. 6 junior in the U.S. and No. 1 in the world by the next year, winning the US Open and Australian Open Junior.

In 2000, Roddick beat Fernando Vicente of Spain and Fabrice Santoro of France. He also played the Banana Bowl in Sao Paulo and won the match by beating Joachim Johansson in the final round.

In 2001, he defeated Michael Chang, the former French Open champion, in five sets in the second round of the tournament. The next year, he defeated Goran Ivanisevic and the seven time Wimbledon champion Pete Sampras.

In 2003, after a 5 hour long tensed match with the Moroccan player Younes El Aynaoui, Roddick won the quarterfinals of the Australian Open. It was the breakthrough point in his career.

Roddick has made a lot of records in his tennis career like: ‘Fastest serve in Australian open’, ‘Fastest serve in Dubai’, ‘Fastest average in first serve’, ‘Fastest serve in Beijing’, ‘Fastest serve in San Jose’, ‘Fastest serve in Wimbledon’, etc.

He is the winner of the Arthur Ashe Humanitarian Award as he has played a very important role in raising money for the survivors of Tsunami. He auctioned many of his tennis rackets to raise money for UNICEF.