Andy Roddick Breaks Down Racket Tech & Why Federer Should've Switched Sooner | Q&Andy

Served with Andy Roddick

Served Media

Society & Culture, Sports, Tennis

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 May 2026

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Want to be featured on the next Q&Andy? Send us a video on our socials or email us at askandy@servedmediagroup.com Andy Roddick dives into all things tennis rackets. He breaks down the racket and string tech that shaped his career and changed the modern game. Andy explains why he trusted his stringing team with almost complete control and what really changed when Roger Federer made his famous racket switch, including why Rafael Nadal called Federer’s 2018 version the toughest he ever faced. He also gets into string tension strategy across different surfaces and weather conditions, reveals that James Blake secretly used Dunlop rackets inside a Prince bag for years, and argues that strings, not rackets, have been the biggest revolution in modern tennis power. Andy then reacts to his brutally accurate PS2 ratings in Smash Court Tennis Pro Tournament 2, where the game nailed his serve and roasted almost everything else. 📱 Stay up to date with Q&Andy! Follow us on our socials: https://www.instagram.com/servedpodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@served_podcast https://x.com/served_podcast ⏰ TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 Welcome to Q&Andy 1:00 Racket weight, balance, and trusting your stringer 3:59 How much does racket technology actually matter at the pro level? 5:27 How do pros choose rackets and strings? 7:25 Did Andy ever get offers to switch racket brands? 11:01 How many rackets do pros actually bring to a match? 13:05 Should Federer have switched to a larger racket head sooner? 15:44 Random Question of the Day: Andy's appearance in Smash Court Tennis PS2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, everyone. Welcome to McHugh and Andy, the show where I don't know what the hell is going to happen.
0:11.1	No. What do we got?
0:12.1	You know, this week Ella has...
0:14.0	Even more than usual, sorry. Even more than usual. Yeah.
0:16.9	This week, Ella compiled a list that is all about rackets.
0:21.1	Okay.
0:21.7	So it'll be anything from, you know, like, why you bring so many rackets to like, what do you do about weight and distribution and strings and all that good stuff?
0:28.8	Rutro.
0:30.8	And as a reminder, if you want to be featured on the show, send your questions to ask Andy at serpodcast.com or hit us up in their DMs on socials or here in the comments
0:39.9	or please submit a video question so you can see yourself on the show. No one ever wants to do video
0:45.3	questions. Why? I don't know. I want to do them. Frustrating. First one is from Jordan who sent us
0:51.4	an email, which could have easily been a video question.
1:00.1	What was the weight and balance of your racket when you were on tour? Did it change at all during your career? If so, when and how? I don't know. You really don't know at all. I don't know.
1:07.2	I saw a lot of players who knew the weight and balance and if it changed a little bit,
1:13.9	it was like their world would explode.
1:16.1	I knew that I liked it to be head heavy.
1:19.3	I didn't use as heavy of a frame as most people.
1:23.6	But I trusted kind of the racket technicians, right?
1:26.7	I worked with, you know, Grant Morgan and Roman Prokis and the stringing. And they had kind of the racket technicians, right? I worked with, you know, Grant Morgan and
1:28.4	Roman Prokis and the stringing. And they had kind of full, uh, autonomy to send something, hey,
1:34.7	based on what's happening, based on the way they're developing, this might help. And I would pick it up
1:39.2	and it was all fuel. And I didn't want to kind of default to like getting in my own head. You know, math is hard for me. I didn't kind of want to get into my own head about it. But they had kind of full autonomy to say, hey, listen, let's loosen this. Let's loosen what we're stringing it at. Let's tighten it based on, you know, you're in Madrid. The ball flies. You're, you know, cold in Hamburg. The ball's not going
	...

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