LONDON – “Winning ugly” was, at the time, an outburst of sincerity: tennis is not necessarily beauty, said Brad Gilbert, who today, from his position as a commentator on ESPN, sees Andy Murray and Daniil Medvedev as other “winning by playing ugly” culturists and confesses a wish: it is time for an American to win a Grand Slam tournament again.
“We have four American men in the top 20, we would like to have somebody be winning a major, hopefully it will happen in the next five years,” said in this interview Brad Gilbert, a 20-time tournament winner and world number four in 1990, during an interview with CLAY in London.
“Winning ugly”, the best-selling book she first published in 2007, was also the focus of the conversation on the terrace of the All England Club: “You need an ugly day to become beautiful a hundred percent”.
Interview with Brad Gilbert
– If you compare your time with this time, what is impressive, what is different?
– Probably the biggest change is that the number 100 player is so much better now and is so much closer to 10 than it’s ever been.
– You wrote that book, “Winning Ugly”. Do you see someone winning ugly today?
– Yeah, it still happens, you know, to be a great player and to be a successful player, you always have to figure out how to win matches when things aren’t going well. And that’s probably still one of the most crucial elements to being a great player: learning how to win when you’re average. It’s easy to win when you’re having a great day. But it’s figuring out a way to win when you’re not at your best, (that) is the most important type of winning. And it still matters today.
– That was a great name for a tennis book, but it was not that ugly at the end of the day, was it? It was more like winning average, would you say?
– Yes, exactly. The point of it is learning how to win when things aren’t going right. And a lot of club players and juniors don’t know that, and it still matters a lot in pro tennis.
– Let’s take Federer, Nadal, Djokovic. Did they win ugly or do they win always fantastic?
– Their games look beautiful, but they would all tell you that probably the most important type of matches to win is early in the tournament, maybe when things weren’t right that day and they found a way to win and then tomorrow they could look beautiful. That’s the subtle thing of being great: there is probably a huge percentage of matches where you are average but their average is better than everyone else’s. But you still have to figure out how to be successful on those days when you don’t feel a hundred percent physically or mentally. You need an ugly day to become beautiful a hundred percent.
– You saw Djokovic, days ago, having a verbal fight with some spectators at Wimbledon’s Centre Court. How would you assess Djokovic right now?
– I’d just focus on his tennis. His tennis is amazing, considering he’s only about five weeks removed from surgery. And I saw him in the whole practice week getting a little bit better every day. You know, hardly any of the players could be in this position with the quick turnaround of surgery. So that’s the most amazing part.
– Nadal is still trying to come back, first in Bastad, then.at the Olympics. Do you trust him reaching his best level again?
– You know, he’s probably never going to reach his best level again, but I think more than anything, all athletes want to be able to go out on their own terms. They want to be and decide that you know what maybe it’s time for me to stop so he’s had so much you know you know injuries over the last two years that he probably hasn’t had a period where he’s really felt healthy and so that’s what he wants to know more than anything, before he stops what his game is like when he’s fully healthy.
– Speaking about health, it looks like American tennis is becoming healthier? You see more players now, men’s players, women’s players. Is something changing for the good there?
– Let’s hope so. I mean, obviously, it’s been 82 slams since an American man has won a title, which was in 2003, Andy Roddick. So we would love to end that. On the women’s side, you know we’ve had way more success. We have four American men in the top 20 but obviously we would like to have somebody be winning a major and hopefully this we have a bunch of good young players. Hopefully it will happen in the next five years.
– You have been doing tennis broadcasting for a long time. Probably some things also changed in the broadcasting, like they also changed in tennis. What have you to do now that you didn’t do at the start of your career in TV?
– I’ve been doing it here now since 2003, and I think most importantly, I just try to do it myself. I try to be me, I try to have fun, and if there’s more, like here this year, we have a “telestrator”, and we’re doing more things up at the screen and there’s more innovative stuff that we’re doing, but i still try to be myself. I still try to be Brad Gilbert.
– Who’s Brad Gilbert today?
– Any player who was a much better version of me is Andy Murray, because he had we had a similar type style. And maybe, you know, a little bit of that is Medvedev.
– Did you share this impression with both of them?
– No, you just asked me (laughing).
– How would they react? What do you think?
– I don’t know. Well, like I said, they’re both better versions, much better versions.
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