NEW YORK (AP) — If Andy Roddick is willing to go through the necessary steps to return to competitive tennis, the U.S. Open would offer him and pal Mardy Fish a doubles wild card next year.
Roddick complained on his Fox Sports Live podcast this week that he wanted to play doubles with Fish at Flushing Meadows next month — until finding out that the 2003 U.S. Open champion is not eligible to compete currently.
Roddick’s last tournament was the 2012 U.S. Open, and he later officially filed for retirement from pro tennis. That paperwork removed him from the sport’s anti-doping program, which is why he can’t enter this year’s U.S. Open. Roddick would need to have three months in the drug-testing program before being eligible to return to competition.
On Wednesday, U.S. Tennis Association spokesman Chris Widmaier said the organization would be willing to give Roddick and Fish a wild card for doubles at the 2015 U.S. Open.
Roddick, who turns 32 on Aug. 30, said that he and Fish had talked recently about the idea of teaming up in New York. Roddick said it’s something they had originally dreamed about when they were teenagers.
But Roddick began thinking about it again recently as a way to allow Fish to have another positive moment in tennis. Fish, a former top-10 player and Grand Slam quarterfinalist, has dealt with health issues and hasn’t played a competitive match since August 2013.
“We’ve been friends. We went to high school together. We went through our entire careers as brothers, as Davis Cup teammates — the whole deal — and selfishly, I wanted to see him have an awesome time on a tennis court again,” Roddick said on his podcast.
Roddick also said that for him, it would be “a one-time thing; there were no thoughts of a comeback of any other sort.”
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
