Roger Federer’s serve is one of tennis’s most underrated hits. The 20-time Slam champion has greatly improved his serve since the beginning of his career. In his talk on Tennis Channel, Andy Roddick talked about Roger’s serve being a hybrid of the serves of 2 other players.
”Andre Agassi was a player who messed around with his ball toss and the pacing of his serve. Pete Sampras was a more powerful server and had very good placement. I feel that Roger Federer’s serve is a hybrid of Pete and Andre”.
“Roger had the incredible ability to throw any kind of serve at any time. He could throw 97 mph kick serve one time then throw a very powerful serve out wide. He was never predictable and that was what was so frustrating” – the former World number 1 added.
Even at the age of 38, Roger is still competing for the grand slams which shows how good he is. The two met 24 times in official Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) matches, and Federer led 21–3, making Roddick the player with the third-most tournament defeats to Federer in the ATP circuit (Novak Djokovic and Stan Wawrinka have lost to Federer on 23 occasions, but Djokovic currently holds a positive record against him).
In terms of number of matches played, it ranks as the 14th largest rivalry in the Open Era. Both men are Grand Slam champions (Federer with 20 titles to Roddick’s one) and former world number one players. Roddick has lost four Grand Slam finals (Wimbledon in 2004, 2005, and 2009, and the US Open in 2006), each time to Federer.
