The one person no one can stop talking about as another Wimbledon was etched into the history books on Sunday wasn\u2019t Jannik Sinner or Linda Noskov\u00e1, who won the men\u2019s and women\u2019s singles championships, respectively. It seems that, at least for the media freaks who care about how sports are broadcast on television, no one can get enough of Andy Roddick.<\/p>\n
For tennis fans, that\u2019s no surprise. Roddick has hosted the popular\u00a0Served podcast<\/a> for quite a few years now and has spent enough time on Tennis Channel to be recognized by the sport\u2019s ardent viewers as a true talent. But making his Wimbledon television debut\u00a0<\/a>on ESPN<\/a>, Roddick was something of a revelation to the casuals who might only watch tennis a few times a\u00a0year.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll leave the full breakdown of Roddick\u2019s performance and the overall reception of ESPN\u2019s retooled Wimbledon coverage to our friend and contributor Dan Kaplan, who is much more informed about tennis than I am and will have a column out Monday morning with some takeaways from the Wimbledon broadcast. But I want to highlight one particular aspect of Roddick\u2019s debut that should be considered more often across all sports studio shows: the idea of a solo act.<\/p>\n Throughout ESPN\u2019s coverage of Wimbledon, Roddick paired primarily with host Malika Andrews, who was also making her debut as a Wimbledon broadcaster after jumping into tennis for the first time in January as a host for the Australian Open. And in a stark departure from how ESPN has handled Wimbledon studio coverage in prior years, the network opted to do something rarely seen in sports broadcasting nowadays. ESPN kept its lead studio a two-person team: one host and one analyst.<\/p>\n The result was something that somehow felt refreshing and new, but also like a complete throwback to simpler times, when studio shows didn\u2019t need to be jam-packed with four or five analysts being traffic-copped by a host who\u2019s faced with the impossible task of wrangling several domineering personalities. Instead, Andrews and Roddick had conversations. Good conversations.<\/p>\n A tennis fan, casual or otherwise, listening to Andrews pepper Roddick with questions about whatever match they happened to be analyzing was likely to learn something new in under a minute; a stat, a change in approach one player made to counter the other, the games within a game that aren\u2019t readily apparent to the untrained eye.<\/p>\n Tennis is extremely difficult to do studio for, especially when a match is underway. Analysts have next to no time to get a cogent point across before the next set begins. But somehow, in these brief moments between sets, Roddick managed to answer two or three questions from Andrews and impart some actual knowledge to viewers before the match resumed.<\/p>\n Compare that to the 2025 men\u2019s singles final, when ESPN started match coverage with host Chris McKendry and three analysts or reporters \u2014 James Blake, Sam Querrey, and Mary Joe Fernandez \u2014 in the studio. Then, during the midway points, McKendry and Querrey were joined by another analyst, Brad Gilbert. The post-match studio then shifted things around again, with McKendry and Querrey being rejoined by Blake. The musical chairs among analysts made it impossible to maintain a conversational through line across an entire match broadcast. There was no consistency, leaving viewers with a product that at times felt haphazard.<\/p>\n Those problems were solved this year. And it wasn\u2019t just Andrews and Roddick. ESPN often chose the solo-act approach throughout this year\u2019s Wimbledon coverage. Rece Davis and Chris Eubanks, for instance, paired together for the women\u2019s doubles final on Sunday morning.<\/p>\n Some studio shows and sports lend themselves to a more roundtable format. Inside the NBA isn\u2019t the institution that it is without the interplay between Chuck, Shaq, Kenny, and Ernie. But for every\u00a0Inside the NBA or\u00a0College GameDay, there are probably two or three\u00a0NBA Countdowns or\u00a0Football Night in\u00a0America \u2014 shows that were hamstrung by having too many mouths to feed<\/a> and not enough time to feed them.<\/p>\n To be sure, Andy Roddick is a unique talent. Not every analyst is capable of anchoring an entire studio show. But Roddick translates clear preparation and an abundance of passion for the sport into something that can carry a broadcast. He\u2019s never at a loss for words. He always has an opinion or insight ready to share. And there\u2019s rarely a moment where someone else\u2019s analysis even feels necessary. Roddick delivers his perspective with such authority, you\u2019re practically compelled to believe whatever he\u2019s saying is tennis gospel.<\/p>\n So there\u2019s clearly a skill set involved that makes this work for Roddick, specifically. But the one-on-one format worked throughout ESPN\u2019s Wimbledon coverage, not just with Roddick.<\/p>\n Maybe it\u2019d be wise for more networks to take a less-is-more approach to the studio. Find a host-analyst relationship that is truly compelling, and let the host work their magic by drawing information out of the analyst in ways that simply aren\u2019t possible on larger panels. It worked for ESPN\u2019s Wimbledon coverage, and it\u2019d be a breath of fresh air to see other networks consider the solo act more often.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The one person no one can stop talking about as another Wimbledon was etched into the history books…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[843,13380,285],"class_list":["post-39308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wimbledon","tag-andy-roddick","tag-malika-andrews","tag-wimbledon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}