I've Got Your Back Part 4

Brad Gilbert

Andre Agassi has always been a great front-runner, a less-than great come-from-behind player. That's been true of several of the tennis giants, and the main reason they get away with it is that they just don't have to come from behind very often.

In the 1999 French Open, Andre had to dig himself out of serious holes four times.

In the second round, he played a Frenchman named Arnaud Clement. The weather was hot, the clay was dry, the balls were (comparatively) light. Perfect conditions for Andre. So he wins the first set easily, 6-2, and he's absolutely rolling, playing like a genius.

Now he's up a service break in the second, and he's making it look so effortless, moving Clement left, right, left, right, that the crowd is almost laughing. Then Andre jokes with the crowd, and actually gets them laughing.

And then, somehow, it was as if somebody had thrown a light switch. The next thing you know, Andre's game started going down, down, down, and Clement's game started going up, up, up. Andre was up 4-2 in the second set, and wound up losing four games in a row. The match is all even, and I'm sitting there thinking, "What the hell happened?"

Then Andre lost the third set, 6-2. Several times, I could tell he was a little fatigued and struggling with his game. And now he was down two sets to one. The whole time, he was looking over at me, and I was just trying to be positive-to give him a sense of, come on, hang in there. But meanwhile the crowd was in a frenzy, because while they may love Andre, this was a French guy he was playing, and the French guy was putting up a real fight!

The fourth set went to 5-5, then Clement held serve to go ahead 6-5. Andre was about to serve to stay in the match. But as they changed ends, as Clement walked to his chair, I turned to Gil, Andre's trainer, and said, "I think the guy is cramping." Gil said, "You think?" I nodded.

And Gil looked hard at Clement and said, "You're right." Clement was clutching his leg and calling for the trainer. Here he is, one game from the finish line, and he's getting worked on by the trainer. Three-minute delay.

I always look calm out there. First of all, it's my job to look calm; my players depend on me for it. And I'm fortunate enough to have a face with a steady look about it.

Dying a Thousand Deaths

But the truth is that often as not, I'm dying a thousand deaths out there. I understand the heat of battle all too well. I know how flukey a tennis match can get, how a fickle crowd that wants to see more tennis can turn a sure win into an epic struggle.

When you're the player on the court, you have some power to control all this. When you're the coach in the stands and all you have is the strength of your face and the hope that your guy remembers all the prematch strategizing, well...that's when you really earn your dough.

Clement was limping when he came back out to receive Andre's serve, and I was dying. Andre is one game from losing, yet he has this guy in a sleeper hold. The guy is all but paralyzed. But on Clement's first two service returns, Andre nets a backhand, then sails a forehand. In two points. The French Open is about to be all over for him.

Then Andre plays four solid points on his serve and wins the game to force a tiebreaker. I'm sitting there thinking, just tough this out; tough this out, and everything is going to be fine. And sure enough, Andre toughs the tiebreaker out, and the fourth set is his. Clement was officially out of gas: Andre won the final set 6-0.

In another situation, Andre might've been pretty peeved after that match. He might've walked into the locker room scowling after having held on by his fingernails against yet another guy he should have beaten a lot more easily that day.

Instead, he was excited. Here he was, supposedly out of shape, having made a very fit guy cramp. He had made a guy two points from winning say "uncle."

At this point I really did have to put on my Chiv cap and calm Andre down. "Let's just think about the next match, okay?" I said.

Fortunately we didn't have to think too much. Every once in a while, even in the third round of a Grand Slam, you get a nice draw. Chris Woodruff had beaten Andre the one previous time they'd played, but he wasn't truly a clay courter, and he was a little sore from his previous match.

Andre hammered him in straight sets, and we were into the second week. In the thick of things. And Andre hadn't been in the thick of things in the French since 1995. A long dry spell.

His next opponent, in the round of 16, was the defending champion, Carlos Moya.

After three rounds, Andre finally felt he really had his game on again. Unfortunately, Andre has had a little trouble playing Spanish guys on the clay courts. The heavy spin and the slowness of the ball work against him. Fortunately, after three rounds of Agassi-friendly conditions, the hot and dry weather continued keeping the court quicker.

But from the moment Moya stepped on the court, the Spaniard was on fire. Serving big, cracking his forehand, he won the first set easily, 6-4. Andre looked up at me a couple of times, and l could read his eyes: I don't know if I'm going to get this guy today.

I had to disagree with him: It's my job. "Keep fighting!" I yelled. "Just keep working!" But his shoulders were a little slumped, and I was worried. It was the second set, Andre was on my side of the court, and he lost his serve for the second time to go down 1-4. Bad news. Down 6-4, 4-1, double break to the defending champ. Very bad news.

Moya was still playing unbelievable tennis, and Andre still had that look. He was rushing, like he was in a hurry to get it all over with. I always keep it deep down inside, but sometimes I just think, you know what? He's not going to get through this guy today. This was one of those times.

And just then, as if somebody had thrown that same light switch from the Clement match, only in reverse, things turned around. Suddenly--I guess because he was nearly out of it, with nothing to lose--Andre just started hitting out, loosening up, playing much more aggressively. And just as suddenly, out of nowhere, Moya double faulted a couple of times in that 4-1 game. He hadn't double-faulted at all up till then. Now he played a couple of loose points, and between his looseness and Andre tightening the reins, the next thing you know, this match had turned around.

Andre won four straight games, Moya won one, then Andre closed out the set, 7-5. He gave a little fist pump then, not a big one: what it said to me was, I'm in it. I can't believe this. Ten minutes ago I was down 6-4, 4-1, double break; I was out of it, done.

He went down an early break, but wound up winning an unbelievably tense third set. The crowd was like a sleeping giant in that set-they woke up and made Andre their honorary Frenchman for the afternoon, rallying him back to life.

Then somehow, Moya just snapped. His spirit was crushed, and Andre ran through him in the fourth set, 6-l. When we got into the locker room afterwards, Andre grinned at me. "Man, we've been through this three times already, from the brink," he said, shaking his head.

"It's fate," I told him.

"Or something," he said.

Guts

What it really was was guts. He dug his way out of jail three out of four times against guys who were playing well, and all of a sudden, found something in himself that made him a better player than he'd ever been before.

Part of my philosophy about being great is this: when you do get out of jail, you have to have the genius quality to take advantage of the opportunity. Sometimes, when you gut out that ugly match, fate sends you a little bonus the next day--a bonus you wouldn't have been around for if you hadn't been able to capitalize.

That was exactly what happened in the quarterfinals. This time, what fate sent us was Marcelo Filippini, a Uruguayan qualifier who was coming off a gruesome battle against Greg Rusedski. Filippini was so out of gas that Andre beat him in an hour and ten minutes, 6-2, 6-2, 6-0.

It felt as though we'd stepped out of the clouds and into the clear sunlight, just below the summit of the mountain. Andre had lost the 1990 and 1991 finals here, which had been his to win. Maybe he thought he was never going to win the French.

But all at once he was in the semis, and all three of the other guys-his opponent, Dominik Hrbaty of Slovakia. And on the other side, Fernando Meligeni of Brazil and Andrei Medvedev of the Ukraine-were unseeded, and Andre, at number 13, the only one who'd won a major before, was the clear-cut favorite.

It had been raining on and off for a couple of days, the tournament was behind schedule and Andre was worried he'd have to play too many matches in too few days.

He won the first set against Hrbaty, then it started to rain. Andre won the second set in the rain, then lost the third in the mud. Then they stopped the match. In the locker room he told me, "It was so heavy out there, my arm was getting tired. I felt lucky they stopped it." The court had been playing slow as molasses.

Relaxed

I was beginning to discover that I did my best coaching when we were both relaxed, and that the best time of all was dinner. The name I came up with for it was Vittles the Night Before.

Intensity is fine in its place. But when you're sitting in a fine restaurant (and finding some of the best restaurants in the world is one of my favorite parts about my job), with a beer in your hand, it's a great time to bring up a little bit about tomorrow. I was realizing that that was when I did some of my best work.

That night we were in my favorite Paris restaurant, Le Stresa, which made my usual tendency to put a positive spin on everything even easier. I said, "I'm telling you, we're going to have good weather tomorrow. You're going to run through this guy in twenty minutes."

Andre gave me that look he'd sometimes give me, like, easy for you to say. But once I get positive, I won't let anything stop me. "I'm telling you," I said. "It's going to be perfect--we're going to get through this guy in twenty minutes tomorrow."

Sure enough, the sun came out the next day, Andre broke Hrbaty's serve once, and won in twenty-four minutes. Talk about the power of positive thinking!

We were in the finals, and Gil and I were excited, to say the least. But I couldn't think about any of that. The moment the match was over, I was consumed with strategizing against Meligeni and Medvedev's games. Which one would it be? Then Medvedev won. I barely slept that night--I was counting X's and O's instead of sheep.

Medvedev

Andrei Medvedev was number 4 in the world, the hot young guy on the tour--but he was having an absolutely terrible year. He had lost something like seven first rounders in a row; before the French, he hadn't won a match since Key Biscayne. His confidence had been shot.

But here he was picking it up. He beat Sampras in the second round, and carried it through to the final. He was a good clay courter. Still, none of this mattered to me. I thought Andre was going to roll over the guy. I told him, "If you just go out there and take care of business, execute what you've been doing, play aggressive and work him, and watch his backhand down the line, you'll win this."

But there's a kind of rule in tennis. You never know what's going to happen until you walk onto the court. I like to say, Two men enter, one man leaves. And Andre went out to play that final, and I had never seen this before from him, ever--it was as if the body, the mind--everything--froze up. Nobody was home. He lost the first two sets, 6-1, 6-2, in forty minutes. And in the first game of the third set, he was lucky as hell to hold serve.

Gil kept asking me, "What's going on? "What's happening?" I shrugged helplessly. I had no idea. I kept thinking, He's not playing, but I couldn't figure out why. Was it nerves? Andre just wasn't there. And then came another act of God: It started to rain.

It was one game all in the third set. I thought, Come on, just rain a little harder; we just need to stop play; we've got to stop play. Andre was looking up at me, and I kept motioning: tell the umpire to stop.

Then Andre went up to the umpire and asked him to stop, and the umpire called the tournament director on his walkie-talkie, and they did stop play. Medvedev was upset. Momentum was on his side.

Andre went into the locker room. I let him have a minute in there by himself. Then I went in.

A million thoughts were going through my head. Part of me was thrilled that we'd gotten the break—but something had to change. And another part of me was relieved at having the chance to talk to Andre and find out what the hell was going on.

Blazing

The first thing he said to me was, "The guy is too good--I just can't beat him today. He's just playing too well."

That stopped me in my tracks for a second. I looked at him and said, "Andre, what are you doing? You've worked so hard to get here. If you're going to lose, lose with your guns blazing.

"Go back on that frickin' court and start playing. Start hitting the ball and start dictating play. And if you lose, make him hit the shots. Make him earn it. Make him win it.

"Go out there and beat this guy. This guy is not better than you. If this guy is better than you, I'll die right here. He's not better than you. You're just not playing. Go play your game." And I turned and walked out.

Shortest Rain Delay Ever

It might've been the shortest rain delay ever. Four, five minutes, tops. Amazing luck--in effect, I'd been given the chance to call my own time out.

Andre and Medvedev battled to 4-all. But now, even though Andre still hadn't broken Medvedev's serve, he was at least dictating play. He was making errors, but going for his shots, and the match was starting to be more at his pace.

And Andre was starting to find his game--just. Serving at 4-all, he saved a break point with a miraculous scoop volley that literally rolled over the net tape, and Medvedev could barely get his racquet on it. If Andre hadn't hit that volley, Medvedev would've been serving for the match.

Andre hadn't come close to breaking Medvedev's serve the entire match. But after that volley, Andre held serve, and for the first time, I noticed that Medvedev was shrugging his shoulders a little bit.

And when Andre changed ends, he did a little skip step over to his chair. Have you ever noticed that little chatter step he does while he's sitting on the changeover? I smiled. I know my guy, and I know that when the skip step is back, so is his confidence.

Andre broke Medvedev's serve to take the third set, 6-4. Now he had a little fire in his belly, and all at once, so did the crowd. The stands woke up and got on Andre's side. And between that fire in his belly and the reenergized crowd, he started hitting the ball the way he had the whole tourney--ripping everything, taking every shot early, completely dominating play.

Fourth set, Agassi, six games to three.

Andre broke Medvedev's serve early in the fifth and deciding set, but Medvedev didn't fold. When he served at 3-5, he had to fight off four match points, and he saved all four with great first serves. Five games to four, Agassi. When they switched sides, Andre passed my seat, and I yelled, "You just got to believe! Four points!"

Believing

Which is exactly what Andre did. He closed out the match with a serve and a winner and then three service winners. When he held up that cup, with tears in his eyes, it was like he'd been reborn.

Good thing we went.

We all have our limits, but no matter how smart we are (and almost no matter how optimistic we are), we don't really have any idea exactly where those limits lie. As smart and as tough as Andre is--and he's very smart, and very tough--he firmly believed that there was no way he could even go to the 1999 French Open, let alone win it.

He needed my belief in him and my goading to get there, and to get through.

Stay with me on this one. I believe it took a certain arrogance on Andre's part to feel he knew where his limits lay before that tournament. And it took a certain humility on his part to yield to my persuasion, to accept help from me. That humility put Andre in a position to exceed what he had thought were his limits, and to be his very best.

A player and his or her coach have a common goal: for the player to win. Both player and coach have to invest a certain amount of humility into that quest. If one or the other is arrogant, if there's any kind of power struggle between them, their relationship will very quickly be history.

It's a complicated relationship. In a team sport, players and coach get paid by the same person. In tennis, one person signs the other's checks, one gives the other instructions--if there's any resentment about roles, it festers fast. The only way through all of it (in my opinion, anyway) is for the player and coach to relax together, to share off-court time, to have fun. The ability to laugh at the same things is essential.

Early on with Andre, I came up with the idea of making no-lose bets on his results in big tournaments. If he didn't win the title, nothing happened. But if he did, I had to do something I didn't especially want to do--get an earring, for example.

It was a way of being in it with him. It was a lot more fun and interesting than betting money. It gave me my own chance to be humble in pursuit of our goal. It cemented us as a team. And it pushed my own limits, helped me avoid getting stagnant or complacent.

As I would learn, though, there are limits and there are limits.