Andy Roddick Goes Undercover At The U.S. Open As American Men Chase History

Andy Roddick went undercover for a GEICO ad called ‘GEICO Serves New York’ during the U.S. Open.

GEICO

It’s 11:26 on a Sunday morning and the last American man to win a Grand Slam singles title is wearing a fake mustache, a wig, a blue GEICO T-shirt, a GEICO baseball cap, gray pants and sneakers in a garage in Forest Hills, Queens.

As a woman pulls her car into the garage, the man in the mustache and wig, and his sidekick, also wearing a GEICO T-shirt and hat, greet her with: “Hey, how’s it going? Good to see you. I’m Danny. I’m Manny. And we’re the GEICO service aces. Parking’s on GEICO today. Welcome.”

“Danny” is Danny Mondello, the food influencer behind “Meals_by_cug” who has 1.5 million Instagram followers.

“Manny” is Andy Roddick, the last American man to win a major singles title at the 2003 U.S. Open. After launching his popular Served with Andy Roddick podcast in 2024, he has transitioned into one of the most respected tennis analysts in the business as he broadcasts the U.S. Open on ESPN and ABC.

Together, “Danny” and “Manny” went undercover to surprise New Yorkers and tennis fans on their way to the U.S. Open matches by giving fans star service – from parking perks, giveaways and swag, entertainment on a shuttle, and more.

After parking several cars, “Danny” and “Manny” got on a GEICO shuttle bus that was taking fans to the Open, and began to ask them questions.

“Who are some of your favorite players,” Roddick, aka “Manny,” asked one man seated next to him.

“[Roger] Federer, [Rafael] Nadal,” the man said.

“Any Americans?”

“[Andre] Agassi, [Pete] Sampras.”

“Anyone more recent?

“I liked [Robby] Ginepri, James Blake, Mardy Fish.”

“Any others? Anyone who beat them regularly?

“It’s been so long, we haven’t won [a major] in so long….Oh, there’s Roddick.”

At that point, “Danny” chimed in with some jokes at Roddick’s expense.

“He won once,” he said. “It’s pathetic. Win once, lose most was his slogan.”

Pretty soon, the joke was over and it was revealed to the fans on the shuttle that “Manny” was indeed tennis champion Andy Roddick.

“Terrible answers,” he chided in a deadpan to the man who listed Ginepri, Blake and Fish before Roddick.

“You too, smart mouth,” he said to “Danny.”

Roddick ended up chatting and taking selfies with the folks on the bus as they got off.

“Truly you are our favorite,” one man told him.

The jokes about Roddick and how “long” it’s been since an American man won a Slam come at a time when the 23-drought could end on Sunday.

After five American men made the round of 16 this year, Ben Shelton and Frances Tiafoe both won epic five-set quarterfinals over defending champion Carlos Alcaraz and young American Alex Michelsen, respectively.

The two will meet in an all-American semifinal on Friday and an American man is guaranteed to be in Sunday’s final.

It will mark the second time in three years an American man has reached the U.S. Open final after Taylor Fritz lost in straight sets to Jannik Sinner in 2024.

In the women’s draw, American Jessica Pegula is into the semifinals and Coco Gauff will attempt to follow her there when she plays her quarterfinal on Wednesday.

From 1993-2003, three American men (Sampras, Agassi and Roddick) won 7 of 11 U.S. Open titles, but it has been a desert for the American men since.

Roddick would like nothing more than to longer be an answer to a trivia question as the last American man to win a Grand Slam singles title. He has repeatedly voiced on his podcast how eager he is for the next generation to break the 23-year drought.

He believes the Americans are making progress.

“They’re doing a lot of the right things; you know, you’re putting five guys in the top 16,” Roddick said in an exclusive interview prior to the GEICO shoot. “That’s what you have to do. With development, I think it’s very hard to say, ‘Oh, well we’re going to create Carlos or Jannik or Fed or Rafa.’

“I think you put as many in position as you can, put the infrastructures in place to where you have as many in the Top 20 as you can, and then you hope someone breaks.”

Roddick says it’s “night and day” for American tennis since after he retired in 2012.

“There’s progress being made,” he said. “I realize it’s largely at least to the public, it’s a binary decision now, [either] you win a Slam [or] you don’t and there’s no middle ground. I kind of deal in nuance and middle ground and the details matter to me.”

Roddick is a big fan of Learner Tien, the 20-year-old American who reached the fourth round before losing in five sets to Karen Khachanov.

“His ability to shift in and out of patterns, I’m not saying he’s Novak [Djokovic], I’m saying it’s like Novak where he can take on lines, cross and get the patterns he wants,” he said. “His game, the more and more I watch, I realize just how good he is.”

Roddick pointed out that Fritz is 28 and Tien is 20, “so that’s almost a decade of putting players in the latter stages of Slams.”

As for Shelton, Roddick accurately predicted before the epic five-setter with Alcaraz that ended at 3;33 a.m. Wednesday morning that the American had a good shot to pull the upset over a man who was playing his first tournament in 4 1/2 months due to a wrist injury.

“Listen, you have to be a disruptor to even have a chance against Carlos Alcaraz in an extended format,” Roddick said on ESPN. “Ben’s serve is the variable in this entire draw with Carlos Alcaraz. He can control the pacing, he can control a lot of other things that other people can’t against Carlos Alcaraz. Curious to see how they game plan to pitch a good ball game against Carlitos.”

Roddick has received high praise for his analysis during the Open, and said he leaned on Mary Carillo and Jim Courier for advice on being an analyst.

“I don’t know how this commentary thing works, Patrick, I haven’t been doing it too long,” he said to Patrick McEnroe on ESPN during Shelton’s third-round win over Stefanos Tsitsipas.

“Yeah, you picked it up pretty quickly,” McEnroe said.

“Roddick is fabulous on TV, simply fabulous,” ESPN’s Tony Kornheiser said on “Pardon the Interruption.”

Roddick is taking tennis vocabulary to new heights.

He talked about an “energy desert” in Ashe Stadium early in the fourth set of the Tiafoe-Michelsen match as the fans went to get another honey deuce and something to eat, and how the players had to navigate that period for 15-20 minutes.

Referring to his 2006 U.S. Open final against Federer, Roddick referenced how Tiger Woods sat in Federer’s box and cheered for the Swiss.

“I remember Tiger Woods going full Arsenio Hall against me,” he cracked.

He is also a big fan of the technology available now as an ESPN analyst and how it helps him illustrate various points. During one of Fritz’s matches, ESPN showed a graphic illustrating how there was a 25-foot distance between Fritz’s serve up the T and his wide serve in the middle of the service box, and how the service returner had to be ready for both serves.

As Roddick continues to delight audiences with his tennis analysis, he sits and waits, and watches, like everyone else to see if another American man can finally break the drought.

As his GEICO shuttle trip wound down, he exclaimed, “Let’s go to the tennis!”