EVERYTHING about Andy Roddick says `Made In America'. He would need a transplant to put his baseball cap on forwards. He puts heat on his serves like he used to pitch fast balls. He loves South Park and pizza. He was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and to be the new face of American tennis.
Welcome to the 6ft 1in power-serving roadshow that has criss-crossed the globe in his 19th year, gaining titles, dollars and almost ridiculous plaudits from his elders. Pete Sampras called him the future of American tennis. Andre Agassi goes round to his house to practice. John McEnroe (a man he calls, with infinite military-style respect, "Captain Mac") said: "Hey, stay tuned. He's an entertainer."
The former world junior champion, he is appearing at his first senior Wimbledon and no doubt much attention will focus on his let-it-rip serve, the one that jumped up and hit poor Marc Rosset in the eye during practice at Nottingham, the one that is threatening Greg Rusedski's 149mph world record.
How fast is his fastest? "In or out?" he asks. Well, both. "141 in. 146 out." Obviously "in" is more advisable in matchplay and he must have been managing that pretty well since he comes to us fresh from the killing fields of the clay court, having won ATP tournaments at Atlanta and Houston already this year. Along the way Sampras was beat-to-the-point-of-devastated in straight sets in Miami, with land speed-record aces and a cannonball forehand.
But he is not a brute. Among his favourite music is heavy metal and doo-wop, a pretty eclectic mix and one that appositely describes his tennis. The heavy metal hitting with the doo-wop touch. For all the howitzer campaign of his forehands, he has a deft and delightful feel for the ball. Plus a little mischief and a spirit of adventure.
In how many ways does he identify with Bart Simpson? "I would never be mean or anything," he shoots back, implying a shock at the comparison with America's lavishly dysfunctional cartoon kid. Then he fell backwards off his chair ("wooaaaagh!") and suddenly the similarity didn't seem so outlandish.
"I'm a little bit of a goofball," he concedes. "I was the class clown at high school. Smart comments and stuff. There was this one teacher that would make me write 500 word essays as punishment whenever I spoke out of turn or did something bad. So one Sunday I decided I'd write five or six of 'em and when she said: `Right, 500-word essay!' I just pulled one right out of my desk. She made me write 1,000 for that one.
"I was a . . ." he lowers his voice conspiratorially, "smartass."
This claim to fame, loud and livid in many tennis characters past and present, has been largely expunged in the kid. Partly, one suspects, because his mother, Blanche, would always take exception to bad manners on the court. He could swear at himself, dent the odd racket, kick a handy fence but the day he turned round and abused an opponent, she dragged her little howling banshee off the court.
"I would say it was the most embarrassing day I've ever had. I was 12, I guess, and I was playing this kid I didn't like. I thought he'd cheated once before. I just did not like this kid at all. I lost the first set and this kid was really annoying. So he runs up to the net, hits a little ball and I hit it as hard as I can right at him. But he ducks and it goes out. And instead of calling it out, he gives me the finger.
"This drove me nuts. I lost it. `I hate you! You're so mean,' I was shouting. I couldn't express my anger. So Mom came up and said: `All right, you're off the court.' " He broke into amiable laughter, like a grown-up smiling indulgently upon his wayward younger self.
He is grown up in one respect. Agents, world fame, silver Mercedes (actually that last one belongs to his parents but they let him drive it). Yet he retains a boyish charm. He is all over the court, as much with exuberance as drilled fitness. His serves demonstrate the same fascination with speed as any teenage boy on a bike. He seems heedless and joyous in a way we haven't seen since Ivan Lendl. (Just joking.)
"I was pretty energetic as a child," he admits, using a euphemism, one suspects, for hyperactive. He has two elder brothers, with whom it was compulsory to keep up. His eldest brother, Lawrence, was a competitive diver and team-mate of Greg Louganis, the Olympic gold medallist, on the United States national diving team. Little Andy would tag along to the pool and next thing his mother would see him 30ft in the air. "I remember jumping off the towers when I was five or six," he says casually.
"You have to go in like this . . ." he explains, slapping his hands to his side and carefully demonstrating a technique entirely wasted on me (who prefers entry to the swimming pool slowly down the steps). "But I guess I was more often like this . . ." he says, imitating a flying inkspot.
But it was the budding tennis career of his middle brother, John, that prompted the family to uproot from Nebraska and take to Florida's beach culture. It must have been a wrench. "Omaha was a pretty laid-back place. Not snotty," he says in fulsome compliment to his former home. "It's pretty humble."
Then again, a tennis court in the back garden and waves rolling in round your sneakers was some consolation. His brother enrolled in the tennis academy. Kid brother went too and just couldn't stop getting better. "I was no child prodigy born to play tennis," he says. "It just happened."
Then a funny thing occurred. One of those coincidental moments, packed with serendipity, that allowed him to meet the man who has coached him so effectively to No 40 in the world. "It was during a rain delay at the American Junior Nationals, Mom and I were sitting under the same canopy as him," he recalls. "We just started talking and it turned out he lived three streets away from me."
We are talking about Tarik Benhabiles, a Frenchman whose guile and craft was exemplified by the fact he rose to No 21 in the world. Having risen to only 5ft 7in in height, this was no mean achievement. With his gigantic young pupil, they must be the Little and Large of the tennis world.
"We have pretty much opposite games. When we started working together I was just hitting every ball as hard as I could and hitting the back fence half the time. He kind of combined his on-court mentality with mine."
There is a genuine sense of excitement from and about the young Roddick. The men's tennis tour is light years behind the women's game in terms of marketable commodities. Even promoting the men with half-naked posters of Jan-Michael Gambill is expecting rather a lot of our memory banks. We've seen nipples before but who's the blond?
In Roddick and, to the same extent, Lleyton Hewitt of Australia, we have rich, fulsome, potential-packed characters who have brought a little life to a dour, robotic game. You rarely have big-top charisma before you're out of spots, but these two are edging along the highwire in the right direction.
He is not, himself, entirely enamoured of the circus. "I miss home and I miss my friends, but I think I'm adjusting OK." When he adjusted 5-7, 6-3, 6-4, 6-7, 7-5 against the former French Open winner, Michael Chang, at Roland Garros - despite being assailed by the agony of cramp - the watching world might have improved on his rating of "OK".
It was all his fault, the cramping. In his excitement he failed to eat his bananas and then refused to pull out of the doubles the next day.
"Relief, joy - you can't explain moments like that," Roddick said of the victory over Chang. "I almost wanted to cry but I wanted to scream and yell at the same time."
Hewitt beat him in the third round when injury forced him to retire, but it is a measure of Roddick's tenacity that he went to a disco that same night. With fighting spirit like this, you wouldn't want to bet against a reversal of the Hewitt result next time.
All this travelling and winning and earning has played havoc with his social life. He missed his graduation from high school. "But I got the good bits," he says. "I got to go to the prom." Imagine the sensation if he had turned up with Anna Kournikova. He looked sceptical. "She'd have said: `Andy who?' "
Still, there are other ambitions in life. (Not many if you are male, I admit.) He looks a very likely contender for a heavyweight title in the majors. Probably not Wimbledon first. "I'm still learning how to play on grass," he says. But with that wristy serve snarling down on its victims, he begins the fortnight with a telling advantage.
He is not going to go mad in London either. "I might pop somewhere," he says vaguely. "But I've only been to Matchbox 20 so far." After a little cultural negotiation, I discovered that this was a group. I don't know why he looked so surprised that I'd never heard of them. He hadn't heard of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich.
The Royal Box will like him. He says "please" and "thank you" to the ball boys and girls who serve him. He signs autographs willingly, poses for photos picturesquely and seems to regard tennis as a hugely thrilling game. I believe the last time we said that about a male tennis player, his name was Bunny Austin.
