"Roger's like, 'Savannah, stop looking at me and start looking at the ball.'"
Savannah Guthrie had an embarrassing moment with her crush!
The 46-year-old Today co-anchor appears on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on Thursday where she discusses her ill-fated tennis match with her crush, Roger Federer. After DeGeneres initially revealed Guthrie's infatuation with the tennis pro, he reached out to her to get together.
"His people called me and said, 'Would you like to play in this celebrity tennis tournament with him?' I hadn't even met him! Of course I was like, 'Yes. One thing: I'm not very good at tennis,'" Guthrie recalls. "I was hoping his agent would be like, 'Oh that's alright! It's for charity. You don't need to be good.' He was like, 'Oh well my colleague will be in. He can scout you on Monday.'"
"I had to go play tennis, like, I had to audition," Guthrie adds. "... I hadn't played since tennis camp, but... I made it and decided to do it and then I was really bad at it."
DeGeneres shared some video from the tennis match -- where Federer and Guthrie were paired up against Bill Gates -- and it was clear that it did not go well for the morning show host.
"Roger's like, 'Savannah, stop looking at me and start looking at the ball,'" Guthrie reveals. "It was totally humiliating."
Despite her lack of tennis skills, Guthrie says that Federer exceeded all of her expectations.
"I mean I got to meet Roger, so it was crazy! I saw him... he was really nice," she says. "He was like, 'I feel like I know you.'"
Guthrie's crush was first outed on DeGeneres' show last year, where DeGeneres gifted her a life-size cutout of her favorite man.
"We have a house upstate and we have a bar in the basement we call 'The Bomb Shelter' and Roger is the bartender," Guthrie says of the cutout. "It's really funny because it's the basement so it's kind of dark and people visit and they're like, 'Ah!' It's kind of creepy. And he's shirtless"
"Jenna Bush came over and had a couple too many and she broke Roger's arm," Guthrie adds. "We taped him back together."
On Wednesday's episode of DeGeneres' show, the host was candid about her own sexual assault at age 15. On Friday, DeGeneres is set to sit down with Guthrie on NBC's Today to discuss the experience more.
"As a victim of sexual abuse, I am furious at people who don’t believe it and who say how do you not remember exactly what day it was… you don’t remember those things," DeGeneres says in a sneak peek of the interview. "What you remember is what happened to you and where you were and how you feel. That’s what you remember. I think anybody who has gone through it, right now is watching this so angry because you know, how dare you not believe us?"
Watch the full interview on Today on Friday, Oct. 5.
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