© Getty Images Entertainment – Rick Kern
Andy Roddick and his wife Brooklyn Decker have opened up about the American’s retirement from tennis, revealing the 2003 US Open champion didn’t really feel much happiness or joy on the court in his last two years. On his 30th birthday on August 30th, 2012, Roddick announced he would be retiring at the end of the US Open.
“I remember my last year on tour. I see this guy floating around and he’s like #25 in the world. He’s the happiest guy I’ve ever seen. And I’m just like…I just want one more look at the basket.
I’ll do anything. And then there’s relief when you win, not out-and-out joy,” Roddick told GQ.
Roddick’s wife Brooklyn: He was unhappy, irritable
In the last two years of Roddick’s pro tennis career, Decker noticed something was different about her husband and she was asking herself why that was happening.
But when Roddick’s career came to an end, the ex-American tennis star instantly returned to his old self. That was when Decker realized her husband was actually “a man who was suffering” in his last two years on the Tour. “He was not as happy playing.
He became significantly less patient with his injuries. He was irritable. And I naively thought, ‘I married this man and now he’s changing. What’s going on here?’ And when he retired, it was like a light switched on in him.
And he became the person who I knew and fell in love with. And after some time I realized, Oh, this is a man who was suffering and really grappling with the end of his career. And the end of that identity,” Decker told GQ.In 2011, Roddick’s long-time agent Ken Meyerson died of a sudden heart attack in his sleep.
Roddick admitted to feeling devastated afterward and experiencing the biggest emotional breakdown of his career. Roddick says he is not sure if that really pushed him into retirement but noted it did take some love for the game from him when that happened. “I don’t know. He probably took some of my love of the game with him,” Roddick said.
