New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, a Pro Football Hall of Fame-bound Super Bowl champion with a long list of records in his name, didn’t always play football. Andy Roddick convinced Brees to try a different sport after beating Brees in tennis — just, after losing two matches against Brees to start off. However much he’s joking, Roddick wants his small contribution to Brees’ story to be very clear.

What’s impressive about this is that Roddick is the former world No. 1 men’s professional tennis player, having won the 2003 U.S. Open and secured a Grand Slam. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2017. So Brees taking him down twice is something of a triumph.

However, there’s a plot twist. “Yes Drew Brees beat me in tennis when I was 9 and he was 11. Twice,” Roddick wrote on Twitter back in 2014. “I finally beat him and he quit tennis. You’re welcome football.”

Roddick was prompted to tell his side of the story after an ESPN clip before a playoff game between the Saints and Seattle Seahawks mentioned it. He elaborated on it during an unrelated teleconference while promoting another event.

“It’s funny, every time he plays a playoff game on national television, this story comes up again,” Roddick said. “He played — he actually beat me the first two times. I think he was 12 and I was 9, and he was kind of like an after-school tennis player who was better than all the guys who actually practiced like me. Then I beat him and he started playing other sports. Who knows how far it could have gone (had he kept playing tennis).”

Still, the main point of Roddick’s storytelling isn’t that he made Brees hang up his tennis racket and pick up a football, saying, “But I think it just kind of lends itself to discussion of what a good athlete he actually is.” Even if the match was between a pair of preteens, the natural ability Brees and Roddick later put to such good use was on clear display. And it’s something he wants people to remember about Brees’ legacy.