Andy Roddick’s Wimbledon TV debut shows networks need to embrace the solo act

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The one person no one can stop talking about as another Wimbledon was etched into the history books on Sunday wasn’t Jannik Sinner or Linda Nosková, who won the men’s and women’s singles championships respectively. It seems, at least for the media freaks that care about how sports are broadcast on television, no one can get enough of Andy Roddick.

For tennis fans, that’s no surprise. Roddick has hosted the popular Served podcast for quite a few years now, and has spent enough time on Tennis Channel for the sport’s ardent viewers to know he’s a true talent. But making his Wimbledon television debut for ESPN, Roddick was something of a revelation for the casuals that might only watch tennis a few times per year.

I’ll leave the full breakdown of Roddick’s performance, and the overall reception of ESPN’s retooled Wimbledon coverage, to our friend and contributor Dan Kaplan, who is much more informed about the sport of tennis than I, and will have a column out Monday morning with some Wimbledon broadcast takeaways. But I want to highlight one particular aspect of Roddick’s debut that should be considered more often across all sports studio shows: the idea of a solo act.

Throughout ESPN’s 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 gone about 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.

The result was something that somehow felt refreshing and new, but also like a complete throwback to simpler times, when studio shows didn’t need to be jam-packed with four or five analysts being traffic copped by a host that’s faced with the impossible task of wrangling several domineering personalities. Instead, Andrews and Roddick had conversations. Good conversations.

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’t readily apparent to the untrained eye.

Tennis is an extremely difficult sport to do studio for, especially while a match is ongoing. Analysts have next to no time to get a cogent point across before the next set begins. But somehow, in these short moments between sets, Roddick was able to answer two or three questions from Andrews and impart some actual knowledge on viewers before the match resumed.

Compare that to the 2025 men’s singles final, when ESPN started match coverage with host Chris McKendry and three analysts or reporters — James Blake, Sam Querrey, and Mary Joe Fernandez — 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 of analysts made for an environment where having a conversational through line across an entire match broadcast was impossible. There was no consistency, and viewers were left with a product that at times felt haphazard.

Those problems were solved this year. And it wasn’t just Andrews and Roddick. ESPN chose the solo act approach often throughout this year’s Wimbledon coverage. Rece Davis and Chris Eubanks, for instance, paired together for the women’s doubles final on Sunday morning.

There are some studio shows and some sports that lend themselves towards more of a roundtable format. Inside the NBA isn’t the institution that it is without the interplay between Chuck, Shaq, Kenny, and Ernie. But for every Inside the NBA or College GameDay, there are probably two or three NBA Countdowns or Football Night in Americas — shows that were hamstrung by having too many mouths to feed and not enough time to feed them.

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’s never at a loss for words. He always has an opinion or insight ready to share. And there’s rarely a moment where someone else’s analysis even feels necessary. Roddick delivers his perspective with such authority, you’re practically compelled to believe whatever he’s saying is tennis gospel.

So there’s clearly a skill set involved that makes this work for Roddick, specifically. But the one-on-one format worked throughout ESPN’s Wimbledon coverage, not just with Roddick.

Maybe it’d 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 pulling information out of the analyst in a way that simply isn’t possible on larger panels. It worked for ESPN’s Wimbledon coverage, and it’d be a breath of fresh air to see other networks consider the solo act more often.

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