The shirt Andy Roddick was wearing when he won the 2003 United States Open was cool, so cool, with one sleeve black and the other white, and diagonal lines across the chest, and some more diagonals across the back, that Tommy Paul remembers wanting to do anything to get it.

And the hat Roddick wore? Paul recalls that it was one of those “trucker ones,” with the mesh on top that lets your head breathe. He wanted that, too. Immediately. Or maybe as soon as yesterday.

“That outfit did it,” Paul said with a laugh, explaining how he became hooked on tennis.

He was 6 when Roddick won that U.S. Open. That was also the last time an American man won a Grand Slam singles title.

So now that Paul is 18 and one of the top juniors in the game, having won the French Open in June and having qualified his way into the U.S. Open’s main draw this week, is he singularly focused on following in Roddick’s footsteps to a Grand Slam title? Does he think, day and night, about lifting the American men’s game to its heights again, bringing it back to the days of Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras?