Andy Roddick reveals Andre Agassi once told him that his biggest regret was not launching a foundation earlier in his life.
When the American tennis star started his first foundation in 1994, he was still very young and just 24 years old. Seven years after the Andre Agassi Foundation for Education started, the foundation expanded after it also introduced Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy, a tuition-free K–12 charter school.
Apart from launching his own foundation, the former world No. 1 invested in other charter schools and became well-known for making financial donations to hospitals and youth programs.
Roddick: Agassi told me that not starting his foundation was his biggest regret
"Is there, you know, not knowing fully his history from his book, I said, 'What is your biggest regret?' And he said, 'Not starting my foundation early enough.' And that is something that stuck with me in my soul because Andre is one of the most generous philanthropists that Earth has ever seen and what he's done for entire areas of Las Vegas is unprecedented. And so for him to have done all that and still think, hey you know what, I wish I could have done more. We started off the foundation then," Roddick said on his podcast.
This is not the first time that someone from the tennis community has spoken about Agassi in such a way. Two years ago, Sebastian Korda – who has been mentored occasionally by the former eight-time Grand Slam champion – described the 55-year-old as a man with "a massive heart."
“He sees life in a different way than everyone else. He's a very positive, outgoing person. He has a massive, massive heart. He'll do absolutely anything for the people he's close with. He's just a really great human being," two-time ATP champion Korda said of the American tennis legend in one of his interviews from 2023.
