Andy Roddick, the supermodel and the cabbie

It's a Wednesday evening in London and we're sitting in the lobby of his plush hotel, talking about his return to form and his coach, Larry Stefanki.

"He put you on a diet," I suggest.

"I don't think he put me on a diet," he says, bristling.

"Okay, he suggested a diet?"

"No, he said, 'Lose 10 pounds.' "

"The rule was no carbohydrates after midday?"

"No, I don't think he really cared how I did it."

"How much did you lose?"

"Fourteen or 15 . I didn't weigh myself."

"Was it hard?"

"No."

"You've posted a photograph on your Twitter page . . . you're having dinner at what looks like a sushi bar?"

"Yeah."

"Was it a sushi bar?"

"No."

"You're wearing a pink hat."

"I can't talk about that."

I'm getting jumpy. He's giving me nothing. I can't play the game at this pace. The essentially good guy? The loyal friend? I don't see him. Roddick is absolutely crushing me.

"Is this hotel home for the next few weeks?"

"We normally do this during Queen's and then move out to Wimbledon whenever this is finished. We're over here for five weeks, it's a chance to change scenery, try different restaurants and keep it fresh."

"What about your support crew?" I ask. "Who have you got here?"

"This week, my trainer Doug is here. My coach is at home for his son's middle-school graduation, so he'll be coming back this weekend. And I've a friend of mine named Stephen Little - he's actually a London cab driver."

"A cab driver?"

"Yeah, we met six years ago. He came over for our wedding this year and he's a real good friend of ours now."

"How did you make friends with a London cab driver?"

And in that moment, everything changes.

Andy Roddick is sitting in a room of the Chelsea Village Hotel with Brad Gilbert. The month is June 2003 and the 20-year-old world No 6 is not a happy camper. Eight days have passed since his defeat to Sargis Sargsian, an unseeded Armenian, in the opening round at Roland Garros. A week has passed since he fired Tarik Benhabiles, his friend and mentor since boyhood.

It's the eve of the Artois Tournament at Queen's and as he sits down to his first meeting with Gilbert, who has signed on to replace Benhabiles, he complains of a terrible record on grass, and a terrible attitude to playing on it. "Which came first?" Gilbert asks.

"Brad, I don't win many matches on the grass," Roddick protests.

"Listen, you're going to love grass," Gilbert insists. "You serve huge, you have a great forehand. This surface is designed for you to play well."

Roddick isn't biting. "You can put a negative spin on anything if you work on it hard enough," Gilbert observes. "You can talk yourself out of anything. But I'd like to think you can talk yourself into anything. Belief is a huge thing. If you don't believe it, you're not going to do it. If you believe it you've got a great shot." Roddick smiles.

"Dude, read my lips," Gilbert commands. "You're going to go 12-0 [win all five matches at Queen's, then all seven at Wimbledon] here on the grass. We start work tomorrow. What about dinner?" They step outside into the cool evening air and hail a taxi on King's Road.

"Do you know where The Ivy is?" Gilbert inquires.

"Jump in," the driver replies.

Twenty minutes later, they reach the West End and the cabbie is greeted by name at the door of the fashionable restaurant. Gilbert is impressed and requests a business card. The name is Stephen Little.

"Can you pick us up later, Stephen?" Gilbert asks.

"Sure," Little says.

A few hours later, the 57-year-old cabbie is driving them back to Chelsea when he addresses Roddick for the first time: "So what do you do?"

"I play tennis." Roddick says.

"Are you any good?"

"Some days," Roddick says.

"He's going to win Queen's and Wimbledon," Gilbert insists. "Are you a betting man? Put five pounds on him."

"Okay, I will," Little says.

The following evening, they hire the cabbie again and offer him a pass to the tournament. Six days later, Roddick lifts the trophy at Queen's and books Little to drive him to Wimbledon. Three weeks later, they're on first-name terms when Roddick loses the semi-final to Roger Federer.

Roddick has also lost his passport. The date is Friday, July 4. The US Embassy is closed. He is forced to spend the weekend in London.

"I think that was the thing that really did it," Little recalls. "The embassy was closed and everybody else had gone home, and I stayed around and tried to help him."

Six months later, Roddick had won the US Open and was the world No 1. Little followed his progress on the sports pages. Then his phone rang one night, on the eve of the tournament at Queen's. "Hey, listen," Roddick announced. "Instead of paying your ridiculous cab fare every time, why don't we cut a deal for the month? Or maybe you could do some odd jobs for me?" They've been friends ever since.

In April this year, Roddick married Brooklyn Decker, a fashion model and star of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, in Austin, Texas. Sir Elton John played at the wedding. The guests included Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf and Billie Jean King and Mardy Fish and James Blake and a rather curious couple from London who have never even played at Wimbledon.

Roddick has his critics. He talks down to umpires; he's condescending with the media; his game is a technical eyesore . . . but can a guy who invites a 63-year-old cabbie to his wedding really be all bad?

"You married a centrefold," I suggest. "Your angel is a centrefold. Do you remember that song?"

"Centrefold makes it sound like Playboy," he laughs, "but I definitely out-punted the coverage [exceeded expectations], so to speak."

"How's it going?"

"It's going great. To be honest, and my parents say the same thing, until you have kids not a whole lot changes. My goal is to try and be a better tennis player every day, and she has her work in New York and comes when she can."

"Is she here this week?"

"She'll come over probably the weekend before Wimbledon. She was in Paris and went back to do some stuff in New York. She would be miserable if she just had to follow around all the time. That's not really her groove. She likes to work and do her own thing."

"It's probably healthier that way," I suggest.

"Oh, it's great. I think that's why we get along so well. We each are motivated."

It's not easy staying motivated on Planet Federer. Roddick has lost three Grand Slam finals to the Swiss and was labelled a "Fed apologist" by some crank on Twitter last week for acknowledging Federer as the greatest of all time.

"I don't think it's debatable now when you look at Fed's resume," he says, "but I've had a couple of snarky comments: 'Why don't you kick his ass instead of kiss it?' and this, that and the other. And I promise that's the plan, but it doesn't always work out.

"I started loving this game when I was six, seven years old. I have an appreciation for the history of it all. And that [final in Paris] was a big moment in tennis history. So to not appreciate it is ridiculous."

"Did you watch it?"

"No. I was practising with Mardy Fish and we were getting just the score updates."

"Were you rooting for Federer?" I ask. "Were you hoping he would win?"

"Yes, I think so. He's been there enough times in the final and probably deserved a shot at it. And for selfish reasons too . . . I want as few people as possible to win a Grand Slam. There's only a few of us walking around at each tournament so selfishly I was hoping he would keep it that way."

"You've lost two Wimbledon finals and a US Open final to him?"

"Yeah."

"In hindsight, does it make it any easier that you lost to the greatest player of all time?"

"Probably not. I have played in four Grand Slam finals and I've played the No 1 player in the world at that time, four times. Am I going to be ashamed of my career? No. Am I going to go out there and try and beat him [Federer] every time we play? Yes. But I do think about it a lot."

"You do?"

"Oh sure, how can you not?"

"In 2003 you won your first Grand Slam and ended the year as world No 1?"

"Yeah."

"What if someone had suggested that you would play until Wimbledon '09 without winning another one? You wouldn't have believed it?"

"Probably not. But my first thought then would have been, 'Jeez, I hope I just didn't go away.' And I don't think that's the case. Would I have been surprised? Yeah, I think at that point I would have been surprised."

"How do you explain it? How tough has it been?"

"The worst I ever felt about myself as a tennis player was in 2006. I think I dropped out of the top 10 for the only time in my career and actually lost to Murray when he was 19. I remember thinking, 'God! I don't know if I'm going to be a relevant player [any more].' And then Jimmy [Connors] and I got together and if you had told me after Wimbledon that I would make the final of the US Open, I would have said, 'I'll shave my eyebrows if that happens!' I wasn't confident at that point."

"How difficult is that when you have experienced the highs of 2003?"

"You know, I sometimes feel like I have too much perspective for my own good because my worst day is a lot of people's dream, so to sit here and say I live this life of constant disappointment is ridiculous. And I know a lot better than that. I look at the body of work and I think I'm 10 matches away from 500 wins. But certainly I'm hungry. I still want that second slam."

"Have you set an immediate target?" I ask. "A ranking? A particular tournament you'd like to win?"

"I don't know if there's a dead-set thing. We use the term: 'I want to get back in the conversation.' That probably explains it best. Because I wasn't in it. There's the [top] four and I'm probably the next guy now, but I'm a hell of a lot closer than I was at the beginning of the year."

Sports stars who dated Sports Illustrated models

Jarret Stoll
The 26-year-old Stoll, from Canada, plays for ice hockey team the Los Angeles Kings, for whom he signed a four-year deal worth $14m in 2008. An age difference of 13 years between him and Rachel Hunter, formerly married to rock star Rod Stewart, hasn't deterred the pair from getting engaged. Hunter first appeared in Sports Illustrated in 1989 and was back five years later for the 'Dream Team' cover of the swimsuit issue. Stoll and Hunter met in 2006.

Claude Makelele
Noemie Lenoir and French footballer Claude were married in 2004. Two years later, the model could be found adorning the American magazine's swimsuit issue. She has also appeared in films, such as Rush Hour 3, and TV ads in the UK for Marks & Spencer. Makelele's career also prospered as he won Premier League titles with Chelsea in 2005 and 2006, though he did face unfortunate tabloid revelations about the relationship in 2007.

Mickey Rourke
In 1991, the Hollywood actor, star of 9 Weeks, decided that he wished to pursue his dream of a boxing career. In a four-year period, during which he married Carre Otis, who appeared in SI's 2000 swimsuit edition, Rourke had eight fights, winning six and drawing the other two. However, his relationship with Otis, with whom he appeared in Wild Orchid, broke down at the same time and the pair would separate in a blaze of headlines