Andy Roddick Says This $200 Bourbon Taught Him the Biggest Lesson as a Whiskey Entrepreneur

Andy Roddick shocked the tennis world at the 2012 US Open when he announced that he was retiring from the game. His next steps were even more surprising. 

The former US Open champion, threw himself into a range of ventures, ultimately investing in reportedly more than three dozen companies. “When I stopped playing, business interests were everywhere,” he remembers. “All I wanted to do was learn and fail fast.” 

He also developed a love for playing recreational golf, which affords him a chance to play a sport without the stress of being a professional. “With golf, it's not the same because it's not your livelihood. You're not playing for trophies or paychecks,” he says. “I don't wake up nervous before I play golf, like it just doesn’t happen.”

Golf also involves something else he loves: networking. Playing a round is what Roddick calls a “relationship microwave,” since you spend five hours isolated with another adult you might not know that well.

“Since I stopped playing tennis, I think it's made retirement easier, not for the fancy parts of golf, but just because you're meeting people, learning different things and you actually have time to ask questions and get into the nitty gritty. And that part to me is incredibly interesting.” 

And it was Tennessee’s Sweetens Cove Golf Course that inspired and leant its name to his whiskey brand. “Somehow, someway, a whiskey shot before and after the round became part of the culture of the golf course,” he says. That ritual and the so-called 19th-hole drinks led to him partnering with retired football legend Peyton Manning and a group of other investors to create Sweetens Cove Spirits.

“It started as a very small idea, which was basically just out of fun,” says Roddick. “We cared about the quality. We were a little romantic about it, maybe a little too romantic about it for our wallets.”

While it’s hard for the founders to find time to meet in person on the golf course or in a boardroom, they usually have a monthly conference call. “What’s not going to be a surprise to anyone is Peyton's obsession with detail,” says Roddick with a laugh.

But both Manning and Roddick have been very careful to make it clear that they’re not whiskey experts. And purposely “we’re not on the bottles. We always say that along with our board members we should be the shoulders behind the brand rather than the faces in front of it. That’s the way we’ve gone about it.”

The brand launched in 2020 with a $200 13-year-old bottle of Tennessee bourbon. “The price point made it more of a collector's item than something you could pour into something fizzy, so that's probably the biggest lesson learned,” admits Roddick. 

So for its latest release, Sweetens Cove just introduced a five-year-old Tennessee bourbon ($45) and the so-called Dunwoody six-year-old wheated Tennessee bourbon ($60). The lower price for the whiskeys means you don’t need “be as precious with every last sip,” says Roddick. It also makes the whiskey a bit more appropriate for cocktails and could possibly open the door for it to be served at tournaments like the US Open, where Grey Goose and Dobel Tequila have had great success. “I think our new offerings provide that flexibility for that to be a realistic conversation,” he says. “That wasn't a realistic conversation at our other price point.”

So how does Roddick like to drink his whiskey? Usually, with one big ice cube. “I like to drink it slowly over a long period of time,” he says. Lingering over a dram is a fairly new experience for him and something he’s only discovered since retiring from tennis. When he was playing, “I used to always be in a rush, because I wanted to go back, get treatment and then start the next day again,” he remembers. “You don't often drink casually when the goal is speed, right? I definitely started learning to be able to appreciate what I was actually doing and seeing and feeling and smelling and tasting.”

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Sweetens Cove Bourbon Price & Availability

The five-year old Tennessee bourbon is 93.7 proof and has a suggested retail price of $45. The six-year-old Dunwoody Tennessee bourbon ($60) is 95-proof and is made from a mash of corn, malted barley and wheat instead of the more common rye. Both whiskeys are available now and can be purchased directly from the brand.