The Value of Optimism:
Brad Gilbert

By Allen Fox, Ph.D.

Hope can be the basis for apparently miraculous wins.

The most valuable commodity a competitor can possess when things are going wrong is "hope." Confidence or self-belief, as helpful as it may be, is not always achievable nor is it always realistic.

But hope is. Not only is hope realistic, it is always an available emotional state.

There is no rational reason to ever lose hope during the course of match play. The question of victory or defeat in a tennis match is always a matter of probabilities, not certainties.

Regardless of how far behind you may be, your probability of victory is never zero until the last point has been played or you quit. This is a consequence of the scoring system in tennis which requires winning the final point and makes protecting a lead impossible. (Click Here for more on that.)

Thus hope for victory is always reasonable. Maintaining hope under all circumstances is the true competitor's unalterable obligation.

Getting behind in a tennis match is analogous to watching a door close. You have the option of looking at the part of the doorway that has been closed, or the part that is still open – even if it's just a crack.

This is where the competitor has the option of choosing between two equally true perceptions of reality. The great ones choose the one that makes them feel good— hope.

Another of the great examples of the power of optimism and hope is Brad Gilbert's miraculous come back win against Boris Becker at the U.S. Open in 1986. Unbelievably Gilbert won the match after being down 2 sets to love and down 3-0 in the third.

In 1986 Boris Becker was still near the top of his powers.

In his book, "Winning Ugly," Brad described in great detail his thought processes after being so far down to Becker. Brad noted in his book that this was an example of how the combination of intelligent pre-match planning and staying alert during a match can lead to victory.

But I also saw it as the ultimate example of how optimism and hope can lead to victory in a situation that to most people would appear utterly hopeless.

In 1986, Boris Becker was still near the top of his powers and was the heavily favored player going into the round of 16 match against the scrappy Gilbert. The widely predicted result seemed inevitable when Boris won the first two sets easily and then won the first three games in the third.

What were the thought processes in Gilbert’s win?

Brad himself knew, as did everyone on tour, that Becker was a great front-runner whose confidence puffed up hugely when he got ahead, and that he was generally one of the best at finishing when he had a lead.

This situation would have had almost anyone planning for their trip home, but not Brad. Gilbert knew that Becker had an Achilles heel that could still come into play even at this seemingly ridiculously late stage.

It was a hot and extremely muggy New York afternoon. The match had been delayed several hours by morning rain. Brad figured if he could just hold his serve in the third set and somehow break back, Becker might become frustrated at still being on court and having to struggle to win a match he thought should have already been over.

Brad reasoned that if he could begin to frustrate Becker, this frustration could gradually turn into a loss of composure and anger. Possibly the end result could even be a big- time breakdown. It had happened before in a match Brad had won over Boris earlier in the year.

And during the course of the next two hours that is exactly what happened. You would not have wanted to bet on it, but to Brad it was certainly a possibility, and trying to make it happen was a better alternative than becoming despondent and then losing for certain.

Brad knew that making Boris hit one more ball might produce the breakdown he was looking for.

At this stage Gilbert didn't have to truly believe he was going to win the match. But he did have the mental strength to run through a scenario that he knew could possibly happen.

It was amazing that this positive, purposeful, and accurate assessment was going through a player's mind when he had been on court for well over two hours himself in sweltering conditions and was down by two sets and a break.

The possible scenario gave him a plan and hope. With this positive way of thinking it was no wonder that Gilbert was the supreme over-achiever of his day.

Brad had actually gone into the match with a check list of points that he felt could make an impact on Boris. These included his resolution not to be impressed with anything Boris did, to let him pound the ball as hard as he wanted, but make him do it over and over.

His goal was to try to get every service return in play, show Boris some hustle, and make him hit one more ball whenever possible. Even Boris could only hit so many winners before he would start to miss.

And if this happened and Boris started screaming at himself in German, Brad knew that was a very good sign that he was getting wobbly. The question was, could he get him to that point?

“When Becker’s running with a lead, the confidence he displays goes beyond arrogance,” Brad wrote. “He tells you with his body language that he knows he is better than the rest. Except I didn’t believe it.”

Becker showed you with his body language that he knows he is better.

With Boris leading 3-0, Brad knew Becker had already concluded he would win. He decided that if he could eek out the fourth set anything could happen.

In the hot muggy conditions, Boris might get very upset if he had to play more tennis than he expected. And that is exactly what happened. Brad held serve, then with the help of a couple of double faults, he broke Boris to get to 2-3.

The match ran on serve all the way to the tiebreaker. Then inexplicably at 2-2 in the breaker Boris’s feet went out from under him and he took a very hard fall.

And he didn’t get up. Instead he lay there for a protracted period, face down and began, yes, yelling in German. Finally he raised himself to one knee and let out a terrible scream, the sound of pure and total anguish.

To Brad this sound was beautiful. Boris was coming apart. He made two unforced forehand errors and Brad won the breaker.

At this point, Brad wrote in his book, he knew he could win the match. He broke Becker at love and won the fourth set 7-5.

At that point he looked at Boris and saw a beaten man. He knew Becker had decided to give up and fight no longer.

Becker was famous for hard falls—but he usually got up.

With the crowd chanting “USA! USA!” Gilbert won the 5th set 6-1. It was Boris’s first loss ever when leading by 2 sets to love.

And, as with Michael Chang at the French, hope was a key ingredient. As Brad put it, “Instead of rolling over and accepting defeat I believed there was a way to win.”

Once again, it showed the incredible power of optimism in tennis, even in a seemingly hopeless position against one of the greatest players in tennis history.

These first two articles on Chang and Gilbert have shown the power of hope at the highest levels of tennis. But what about you? How could this apply to your game? My answer is in exactly the same way.

In the third article let’s look at some examples of how to cultivate hope in difficult situations in club matches . You might not be playing on a Grand Slam stadium, but if you learn to stay optimistic you might produce your own miracle victory. Stay tuned!