Andy Roddick Shares the Whiskey That Made Him Love Bourbon

This probably won't come as a shock to anyone, but Andy Roddick is good at golf. He’s obsessed with the game and former professional athletes have a cheat code for building muscle memory that we mere mortals can only hope to discover on Reddit one day. Roddick's put in the work and every shot this two-handicap has hit this morning has been crisp.

But golf can be a cruel game and the 2003 US Open champ hasn’t been able to make a putt on Pinehurst’s short course, known as the Cradle. After another lip-out on the eighth hole, Roddick goes to the backhand for a three-footer with just the right amount of sidespin to find the center of the cup. It’s a shot only a tennis player would hit.

Roddick is at Pinehurst, among the best golf courses in the U.S., promoting Sweetens Cove Spirits' new partnership with the venerable North Carolina sand hills golf resort. Roddick co-owns the celebrity liquor brand—as well as the much-hyped golf course of the same name—with partners Peyton Manning, Mark Rivers, Skip Bronson, Tom Nolan, Eli Manning, Cooper Manning, Jim Nantz, Drew Holcomb, and Rob Collins.

Just in time for this year’s golf US Open, the resort will offer Sweetens Cove Bourbon across the property and signature cocktail called “Kindred Spirits” at the Cradle Crossing bar. It’s a riff on a sweet-tea old fashioned, perfect for a hot, sunny day on the course.

After our round, Roddick sat down to chat about making whiskey, “retirement,” family life (he and wife Brooklyn Decker have two children) and, of course, tennis.

Men's Journal: What made you want to get involved with Sweetens Cove?

I'm a golf nerd. I love golf. It's kind of been my social saving grace since I stopped playing tennis. A business partner of mine read an article in the New York Times talking about Sweetens Cove, then our group ended up purchasing the golf course.

One of the traditions at the course was everyone would bring a bottle of whiskey, have a shot, leave the bottle behind, and at the end of the day you're sampling everyone's bourbons. We had this idea that if they're going to be doing it there, it should probably be ours, so we started a bourbon company.

Do you remember your first glass of whiskey?

It was probably something you could have lit on fire when I was 16 years old.

Ah, so it wasn’t love at first sip? How about the whiskey that got you into whiskey?

Yeah, the company called Garrison Brothers, which is out of Austin, TX. I'm from Austin. So, the local angle of it got me curious. I wasn't a huge whiskey guy while I was playing but afterwards it's something you can sit, be patient, and settle into. Since then, I've gotten an education from our master blender Marianne Eaves. I've become more curious about the nerdier parts of making it.

What about making whiskey interests you?

I came in as a complete dumb dumb and now I'm only a half dumb dumb. The timing, the blending of things, what she's looking for in the certain blends, mixing older whiskeys with younger spirits. I like watching and staying out of her way. Then I’ll ask, ‘Well, why did you do that?’ And then she comes up with this answer that makes total sense. She has this fluency about it, which is fascinating. It's fun watching experts in their space.

Your podcast, Served, has become rather popular, what else are you up to in retirement?

I like having a reason to jump out of bed. My first company was the most boring thing ever and won't make your writeup. It's a commercial real estate company in the triple net space that we started while I was playing. I co-founded the healthcare company called Viewfi, which is basically a way to diagnose musculoskeletal injuries virtually.

I work on Sweetens Cove and the media company with the podcast, which has done well in the first three months or so, and it's been fun.

Amidst the chaos, how do you create a stable family life?

I prioritize mornings. I'm always up with the kids, then when the workday's over, it's over. I try not to react to my phone once they get home. I don't think I have a lot of talents, but being efficient and actually prioritizing things is something I developed from tennis. I've had a schedule since I was like nine that's pretty down to the minute and focused. So I like being busy, but whatever is in my inbox when they come home can wait until they're asleep.

What do you consider your greatest success on the court?

I think consistency over time. An individual result is hard to value. Two points at Wimbledon and I could have won, and one less point at the US open and I would've lost. But staying at the top of the game for a decade I think was good. I think I was a good teammate in the Davis Cup. I don't have a lot of regrets about the work, which I think is something that could have haunted me.

I was trying to beat magicians with racket skills and athleticism and I think I was a chucker who was trying to throw a hard right every once in a while. I'm proud of the way I went about it.

What do you think your greatest success off the court has been?

Getting my wife to marry me. We've done a lot of great work with our foundation. I think one of the luckiest parts of being in tennis is I got in the right vacuum. If you look at the past players in tennis compared to other sports and what they've done with equality and social justice issues...Andre Agassi has completely changed the entire side of Las Vegas with his charter schools. Obviously what Billie Jean King has done, Martina Navratilova coming out in the early eighties as the number one tennis player in the world. Tennis players have never been scared to lead. I was lucky to have a front-row seat to that from 17 on. Fast forward to our foundation—our first event was a tennis clinic in a parking lot and now we serve over 40,000 kids a day in afterschool and summer programming in central Texas. I think we've done well, but I also realize I just got caught up on the right wave.

What do you feel is the greatest shot you've ever hit?

Oh, easy. It was 2011. It was a match point at a tournament in Memphis. I was running toward a volley on the other side of the court and dove. I didn't see the shot, I just kind of slapped at it. I ended up hitting it just an inch over the net. Heard the crowd go nuts before I rolled three times and looked at my opponent [Milos Raonic] and he was like, you actually made that. My arm was all messed up, but I don't think there's a close second place.

What does success mean to you?

There are outcomes which are great, but you can do an average job and get a decent outcome. I think learning and being honest with yourself and not making the same mistakes over and over. It’s also important not being scared of looking stupid. I think if you walk away from whatever you’re doing without faking it but leaning into it, I think that's successful.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

My dad was a farmer from Wisconsin, he said surround yourself with smart people and ask a lot of questions.

Did tennis give you something you couldn't get anywhere else?

Tennis is a crazy teacher. You end up being out there alone for five-and-a-half hours with no feedback. You can't pass the ball to a teammate. You can't just hustle up and play defense and be effective. You have to execute. Since I retired, I've realized how weird it is and I don't think I realized it during. Even from the time you're a kid—you're nine years old out there alone. You have to learn to problem solve. There's accountability and it has to come from a place of self. Tennis is insane, I'm more thankful for it every day that passes, even though when I was in it, I was oftentimes exhausted by it.

What motivated you in your tennis career?

I operated from a weird place of ego and insecurity. I knew what I was, I knew what I wanted to be, but I also knew that I wasn't good enough to expect those things. So it was a little irrational. The insecurity manifested in a good work ethic, but it wasn't because I was super self-motivated. I knew that's what I had to do to trim the margins from the people I was trying to beat.

What motivates you now?

Learning and creating fun things. We're here at Pinehurst today and this little bourbon brand is now the signature cocktail at Cradle Crossing. I'm a golf nerd, so it's cool. It's fun. Those little moments of levity, like seeing the bottle on a menu makes me smile.

You’ve got to be a little bit proud, too?

Yeah, it's a pretty big audience. It's a little humbling. This is the home of golf here in the States. I feel thankful that they're partnering with us.

What are your feelings on pickleball and some of the tennis community’s reaction to it?

I think it's really fun. I think the popularity is rightfully based on the ease of it. I think there are a lot of advantages over tennis: It takes up less real estate, the learning curve is shorter, you can do it while you're drinking. I think Andre (Agassi) put it nicely: It's a big enough sandbox. My son didn't want to play tennis at all, which is great, but he wanted to try playing pickleball. My daughter is on the next court playing tennis. They do lessons for six months. All of a sudden one day he asks to play tennis…and he can play. I think it's a great teacher. I don't know if anyone's ever going to watch it on TV. So I think the reaction that you're alluding to from the tennis community, I assume, is from a competition standpoint. I just think they're totally different things. I think one is a very recreational participatory thing and one is one of the hardest sports on Earth.

What would you have done if tennis hadn't worked out?

It would've been something in tennis, maybe an instructor or trainer. I probably would've gone to college and maybe figured it out. But it's weird to think about what you might've done when you've had an idea of what you're going to do from when you're 16. I was always attracted to something in the sports space.

How much longer can Novak Djokovic stay on top?

He's made a pretty obvious decision this year to play less and prioritize being home. So ranking wise, I don't see how you can play eight events a year and stay number one in the world. The math doesn't work. But he moves great and won three out of four slams last year, so the runway is there. He can be top five as long as he chooses to be. He said he wants to play until 2028 in the Olympics, which is really smart if you just want people to stop asking you when you're going to stop, but I think he was just trolling people.

We had a first-time Slam winner in Australia. Do you see anybody else winning their first this year?

I think (Carlos) Alcaraz, (Jannik) Sinner, and Djokovic are going to take up a lot of real estate for the next couple of years. I personally would love to see an American man in the finals again. I think what Coco (Gauff) did last year at the (US) Open—if she repeats…she's the cover of Time magazine this week, that's just phenomenal. Coco's awesome, she’s the coolest. I would love to see Ben Shelton break through.

But I'm a dummy because after Rafa (Nadal) I was like, we won't see teenagers win again. And then Alcaraz became No. 1 in the world. It's pretty cool. I was also wrong thinking tennis might struggle a little bit in the vacuum of the big three. Who's going to fill that void? And then Alcaraz, Sinner, and Coco come along and it's like, okay, we're good.

Since you brought up Coco, where do you feel USA tennis is at the moment?

I think it's great. When I was growing up, we were spoiled. We had someone winning a Slam, every other Slam. And it also needs to be said that the women have never stopped doing their job and winning Slams. So it's a gender-based question, but I think it's great. I mean we have four guys in the top 15, and as they keep improving, hopefully they're not bunched up between 10 and 20, but between five and 10, then three and 10. But I think it's trending the right way.

It's an Olympic year. Do you see any dark horses playing well in Paris?

The Olympics are weird. You get more outlier winners at the Olympics than you do at other events and I'm not sure why that is. On the men's side, you had Mark Rosse in '92 and Nicholas Massou won in 2004. I know Novak is very hungry. He hasn't won the Singles Gold and that's kind of the only thing he hasn't done. But you'd have a hard time finding me betting against the top four men in any event. And same goes for the women. The fact that it's on clay makes (Iga) Świątek the out-and-out favorite.

So when did you start playing golf?

I started playing a lot probably my last two years on tour. The year after I retired, I was a five day a week-er. I just became nuts and went from a high handicap to a lower handicap and was obsessed. I would just wake up and get out the door for a year of my life, which was awesome.

It gave me something to schedule and process. I wasn't as serious about it as tennis, obviously. But I don't think I was over being programmed to have to try to get better at something every day. But the process made sense, and also it was something I wasn’t expected to be good at, which was fun for me.

What do you love about golf?

I love seeing different places. It's an excuse to see different parts of the world. It’s also like a social superpower. Where else can you spend four hours with a stranger and it's fun and it's not weird. What did you talk about for four hours? Like nothing and everything, and we would do it again. It's like a social cheat code.

Do you believe in Mulligans?

No, I don't. I believe in bad shots that you should have to be accountable for.

You have two kids. Can you describe your parenting style?

You kind of have to have a certain set of expectations, but our kids have fun every day. There's music in our house nonstop. But I think I can also be ‘the heavy’ when needed. Respect is a big thing and not towards us. I don't expect that daily from them. But when we're out and about, knowing how to converse in the right way and looking people in the eye, and I'm kind of big on that sort of thing.

What have you learned from your children?

Patience. Not as a choice, but as a necessity.

What do you think the key to a successful relationship is?

This is a boring answer, communication. I always say I got married a lot younger than a lot of my friends and hopefully this comes off the right way in print. But there are probably a lot of people in this world that you could love, but can you fight with this person when it's not perfect and still have respect on the other side? That I think matters. And I think that's its own kind of form of love. I think it has to be respect based.

You’ve traveled quite a bit, is there anywhere still left that you want to go?

There are a lot of places I want to go. I want to go on safari. I want to see New Zealand, and India. Machu Picchu looks pretty, pretty sweet. So I'm now past the first 10 years after (retirement.) I traveled so much during my career, I didn't want to leave home. Now I'm in this place where all I want to do is see stuff, which is exciting.

Who was the first person you remember admiring who was not related to you?

I made a lot of bad wardrobe choices right along with Andre Agassi. A lot of hot pink, a lot of jeans in the summer in Texas. I've been lucky enough to meet a lot of my heroes and become friends with them, which is a crazy, crazy thing. But I guess he was my guy.

Did you really get rid of all your trophies?

My wife got on me the other day. We have a little studio in our house and my dog was pushing the door open. Later on, she opened it later on and heard a clink. She said, ‘You're using US Open trophy as a door stop for a dog?!!!’ I don't care about stuff. I threw away most of the trophies. It’s just physical stuff. I have my father's ashes, but I'm not precious about most physical things.