Brad Gilbert bothers people. He always has. In particular, he bothers people who are better than he is at tennis. This is a man who, over the course of a dozen years of outsmarting and outlasting more talented players on tour, brought John McEnroe to the brink of retirement—“When I start losing to the likes of Brad Gilbert,” Johnny Mac said, “it’s time to get out of this game”—made Boris Becker blow a gasket on the U.S. Open’s Grandstand court, and inspired Pete Sampras to drop an f-bomb in a national magazine. When the story’s writer mentioned Gilbert, who was then the coach of Sampras’ rival, Andre Agassi, Pistol Pete responded without hesitation:
“F--- Brad!” he said.
Even when a top player is employing him, the man finds a way under his skin. Now that I think about it, maybe the young, immature Andy Murray had a very good reason for screaming at his coach when he was losing. Maybe it wasn’t just his immaturity. Maybe it was because his coach was Brad Gilbert.
Does Brad, or as he’s known around the game, “BG”—if there has ever been a man who was born to be called by his initials, it’s Brad Gilbert—bother you, too? I know more than a few people who would nod vigorously at this question. They can’t stand his commentary for ESPN and mute him as often as possible. They sometimes wish that a device could be invented that would mute his voice alone.
I can think of many types of people who would obviously be turned off by Brad. Lovers of polished broadcaster's pipes like Dick Enberg’s must cringe when they hear Gilbert’s flat, scratchy tone and hyper delivery. Lovers of restrained British-style tennis commentary must roll their eyes when Brad finds four different ways to describe a single winning forehand, one of which is, “That’s a . . . that’s a . . . that’s a ‘how do you do’ shot!” Lovers of stylish clothing must wonder how he could be allowed on TV in a yellow blazer. Lovers of the English language must hang their heads when they hear Brad say, more than once, “He lost in those tournaments to Federer and Nadal, respectfully,” instead of “respectively.” If there’s one type of listener that must surely love Brad Gilbert, it’s the aficionado of the malapropism.
But Brad Gilbert doesn’t bother me. While Darren Cahill produces as many insights in roughly half as many words, I’ve come to like Brad’s rough edges. I like his imperviousness to irony—he attracts the lion’s share of jokes and taunts from his colleagues, but they seem to bounce right off his big skull. I like the way he brings the gung-ho style of a team sports guy, complete with jock jargon and a nerdy love of stats, into the more rarefied world of tennis.
Yes, Brad has an opinion on everything and a prescription for everything. At TENNIS Magazine, he does a monthly column called, “Brad’s 3 Reasons Why...” in which he lists all the changes he would make in the game—suffice it to say that, if he ever got to rule the game, very few things would be left un-changed. And we know he can go around the bend with his prognostications. Gilbert once predicted that Federer would win 20 majors and Nadal wouldn’t win the French Open in 2008 (he won it without losing a set). After the Wimbledon final last year, he turned around and said that Federer wouldn’t catch Sampras’s 14-major mark, but that Nadal would. Are you surprised that he’s now driving the Murray bandwagon? Gilbert told me in a recent phone conversation that he wouldn’t be surprised if the Scot was No. 1 in four months. (I’m not even sure that’s possible, but it sounded good.)
In other words, Brad is excitable. What’s important is that he’s excitable in a good cause. Did he look ridiculous at Wimbledon when he stood up and gave Nadal a round of applause in the ESPN studio after the final? Yes. Was it also touching and appropriate? Absolutely. Is it illogical to say Murray will be No. 1 almost immediately, even before he has won a Slam? Of course. But later in my conversation with Gilbert, he also said this about Murray: “What sets him apart is that’s he’s such a good volleyer for someone so young. The other guys who were good volleyers when they were young were Edberg, Sampras, and Federer. All those guys spent a lot of time at No. 1.” Pretty interesting, right? I never would have thought of that.
Brad, unlike ESPN’s other announcers, makes tennis sound like a big-time sport; he makes a match sound like must-see TV; he gets me intrigued about up-and-coming players I haven’t seen yet. He obviously knows how to analyze the game, and he sees its details from a coach’s perspective. If you think that power-baseline tennis doesn’t involve tactics, adjustments, and shot-by-shot decisions on the part of the players, you need to listen to Gilbert—when he describes a rally, what looks like a slugfest begins to sound a little closer to an athletic chess match. Beyond the nuts and bolts, Gilbert falls in love with certain guys’ games and communicates a winning enthusiasm about what they do. Nadal is a particular favorite; Gilbert spent much of Wednesday night pointing out the excellence of Nadal’s footwork. I’d always realized on a general level that Nadal moved well, but seeing how he hard he worked to get around and hit a forehand even off a fast-moving slice from his opponent was eye-opening.
So far in Oz, Brad has told us that Mike Agassi called him to tell him that Marin Cilic will be in the Top 5 this year, that Andre Agassi strung his racquets more loosely at night in Melbourne, that Nadal strings his sticks at 42 pounds, that Djokovic has developed a hitch in his forehand swing (we'll see if that turns out to be true), and that the Aussie teen Samuel Groth has a “monster serve that you have to see.” Somehow this information sounded important, even shocking, to me when I heard Gilbert say it—I was certainly psyched to check out Groth. Maybe it’s because I know this info is coming from BG, a guy who has become one of the Zeligs of the game, a true insider and a big part of its recent history.
We know Gilbert kicked Agassi’s butt into gear during the rain delay at the 1999 French Open. We know he coached Andy Roddick to his only Slam title, a win that seems like a borderline miracle now. But do you know who pointed Steffi Graf out to a newly single Agassi as someone he should date? And do you know who ended up with the racquet that Nadal used to win the greatest match of all time, the 2008 Wimbledon final? That’s right, it’s the one and only BG. When I heard that story, I wondered how Brad got Rafa to give that stick to him. Of course, there was only one answer: Every once in a while, it pays to bother people so much.