RECALLS BEING IN THE SHADOW OF GREATS AS HE ENTERS HALL OF FAME WITH CLIJSTERS
ILLUSTRIOUS COMPANY could she feel like she was still involved with the sport.
“I’m so fortunate to have tennis in my life,” she said. “It’s been magic for me.”
Roddick thanked his several coaches and his father and his wife, Brooklyn Decker, who sat in the stands near fellow model Chrissy Teigen and her husband, singer John Legend. He also congratulated his fellow inductees, joining those who praised Clijsters as a person. “I have a simple way of putting it,” he said. “If you have a problem with Kim Clijsters, I blame you.”
Roddick also spoke of
The time in a ‘vacuum’
And he said he doesn’t play “the ‘what-if’ game” and wonder what he might have done if he hadn’t overlapped with the Big Four.
“It [stung] being in your vacuum at times. I still consider myself lucky,” said Roddick, who lost to Federer in a Grand Slam final four separate times. “I got to guard [Michael] Jordan. I went the distance with [Muhammad] Ali. I pitched to Babe Ruth. I feel like I know what it must have been like to watch Picasso. I saw it all.
“I won a couple times — not a lot, but a couple,” he said. “The big four guys really [angered me] most of the time when I played them. But I’m absolutely proud to have my life and career associated with such quality individuals.”
And he said at the pre-ceremony news conference that when he woke up that morning, the first text he saw was from Federer. “He makes it extremely hard not to like him as a person,” he said.
“It’s almost like your childhood flashes through your head,” Clijsters said after the induction ceremony. “It’s very humbling. I’m just trying to take it all in.”
Roddick noted that as an inductee he now gets to vote on future candidates. And he joked that he would take advantage of his new power to pay Federer back for all of the defeats.
“I might vote against him,” he said with a smile.