I've Got Your Back Part 1: How I Became Andre's Coach

Brad Gilbert

Thank God for Andre Agassi. He knew I wanted to be a coach before I did.

I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I certainly never planned to become a coach to two of the greatest players of our time. Agassi and then later Andy Roddick. ( More on Andy in upcoming articles).

After all, I'd made a few million dollars in prize money during my playing career. And a few million more from endorsements. I could've hung it up and walked away-raised my family, managed my investments, and done all right.

But in March of I994, my life turned one of those corners that life sometimes turns. I was playing at the Lipton Championships in Key Biscayne, Florida, just up the road from Miami. I was thirty-two years old, and I was still hitting a pretty decent ball, good enough to be ranked number 28 in the world.

Then, one afternoon when I went out to warm up for my match, I ran into Andre on the practice court. We knew each other pretty well from the tour, and even though he was almost ten years younger than me, we were fairly close buddies. I liked the guy. A lot of other players weren't crazy about his flamboyant style. The Wild Hair. (He used to have hair.) The ear rings.

People thought he was cocky, aloof. To me, he was a guy who was warm and genuine--a kid who was in the process of becoming a man, under extremely challenging circumstances. I knew all about the pressures of the pro tour, and I felt for him.

He had been nice to my young son and daughter at a tournament in Arizona a few weeks before, and I appreciated that. Plus, from the first moment I ever saw him play (at Stratton Mountain in 1986, at sixteen years old and around 120 pounds) I thought he was an awesome tennis talent.

Crossroads

But at that point early in 1994, he was a player at a crossroads. He was only twenty-three, but he'd already been on the pro tour for over seven years, and he'd gone places.

He'd come on like a skyrocket in the late eighties and early nineties, winning his first ATP title at seventeen, reaching his first Grand Slam finals, at the French and U.S. Opens, in 1990, and winning Wimbledon (beating Becker and McEnroe in the process) in 1992.

He'd risen as high as number 3 in the world, but he had gone down as low as the twenties. He had a reputation as a streaky underachiever--a potentially great player who wasn't living up to his potential. In particular, he'd managed to lose two French Open finals, in 1990 and 1991, against players he should have beaten.

When I caught up to him in Key Biscayne, he was coming back from wrist surgery, his ranking was down in the thirties, and unbeknownst to me, he was questioning himself a little bit. (Andre was seeded 24th in the tournament, I was 23rd.) I was pleased when he invited me out to dinner, at an Italian restaurant in a place called Fisher Island.

I'd never been to Fisher Island before. You drive your car onto a ferry to get there. The whole way, I kept feeling a little strange, as if I were crossing over to a new place in more ways than one.

Andre was already sitting on the deck of the restaurant when 1 got there. Next to him sat his longtime best friend and manager/ agent, Perry Rogers. We ordered our dinner out on the deck, and as the sun set and the boats cruised by in the channel, we drank a few beers.

It was all very pleasant, except that after a couple of minutes, I realized I was in the middle of an interview for a job I had never even thought about doing.

Andre was asking me a million questions about the direction of his tennis game: what was he doing right these days? What was he doing wrong? Where should he be looking to go with it?

Now, I love to talk, and I especially love to talk about tennis. I believe I know a little something about the sport. And I had plenty of opinions about Andre's game, which I'd been watching closely since he started out.

I thought his potential was limitless. I may have happened to be ranked higher than he was at the moment. But l knew enough about what I did for a living to realize that while I had talent, Andre hit a tennis ball the way God intended it to be hit.

Hitting the ball beautifully isn't enough, though. What stood out to me at that moment was that I sincerely believed Andre wasn't thinking enough about his game. In particular, he wasn't paying enough attention to his opponents' shortcomings. There wasn't a thing wrong with his strokes.

He wasn't looking to me for technical improvement. What he needed was a strategist.

Maybe it was because I had a couple of beers in me, but the more I talked, the more excited I got. After an hour and a quarter, I said, "Andre, I really think I could help you become a great player." 6StillBrad Caption: After that fateful dinner I started working with Andy the very next day—at 11am.

"You think so?" he said.

I looked him in the eye. "Yes, I do," I said.

We began working together the next day: No trial period. No contract. Just a handshake. I made one change immediately. When we'd left the restaurant the night before, I said, "I'll get us a practice court at eleven A.M."

Andre gave me a look. He was notorious for being a night owl. "I never practice before two," he told me.

I smiled. "I'll see you at eleven," I said. "Don't be late."