Roddick, Clijsters will headline Hall class

Andy Roddick and another former No. 1 player, four-time major champion Kim Clijsters, will headline the International Tennis Hall of Fame Class of 2017 today.

More people want to ask Andy Roddick about a Grand Slam final he lost than the one he won.

Yes, that 16-14 defeat in the fifth set against Roger Federer at Wimbledon in 2009 seems to spark more conversations than Roddick’s straight-set victory at the 2003 U.S. Open, the last time any American man won a major championship.

“For better or worse, it’s going to be the ‘09 Wimbledon final. It’s the match people want to talk about. I’ll be in a coffee shop and people want to talk about it. People will tell me where they were and where they were watching it,” Roddick said in a telephone interview Friday, the day before he is inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island.

“It’s a proud moment for me. To go on the biggest stage and — I know I didn’t come up on the right end of it, but I don’t know that I could have played or executed a game plan better than I did for 4½ hours,” he said. “It’s definitely the one I hear about the most and talk about the most and kind of think about the most.”

On Saturday, Roddick and another former No. 1 player, four-time major champion Kim Clijsters, will headline the Hall’s Class of 2017. Also being enshrined this year: Monique Kalkman-van den Bosch, a four-time Paralympic medalist in wheelchair tennis; journalist and historian Steve Flink; and tennis instructor Vic Braden.

Roddick and Clijsters were moved by the opportunity to tour the hall with family and friends on Friday.

“When I walk through there and I see the history of our sport from when I was a little girl — Steffi Graf and Monica Seles and Arantxa Sanchez — and just a few meters over, there’s my picture or my trophy, it feels very special,” Clijsters said. “But it’s also very hard to understand and have it sink in.”

Both played their last singles matches in 2012 at the U.S. Open, an important site for their careers.

Clijsters won titles in New York in 2005, 2009 — with her daughter, Jada, prancing around the trophy in Arthur Ashe Stadium — and 2010, along with the Australian Open in 2011.

In addition to winning his Grand Slam trophy at Flushing Meadows, Roddick was the runner-up there in 2006 to — yes, that’s right — Federer. Roddick’s trio of runner-up finishes at Wimbledon in 2004, 2005 and 2009 all came against Federer.

“I gave myself a lot peace of mind when I decided I wasn’t going to compare myself to Roger,” Roddick said with a chuckle.