On the face of it, you’d be hard pressed to think of two guys more different than Brad Gilbert and me. I talk about stocks on CNBC; Brad flies around the world coaching Andy Roddick. But the first thing you need to know about Mr. Gilbert is that he is a man of many parts, and an important side of him is that he’s a dedicated investor in the stock market. Which is what— indirectly—led to our first meeting.

Back in the fall of 1997, when Brad was still coaching Andre Agassi, Andre hit a bit of a rough patch in his game. So rough was this patch that his ranking fell to an unbelievable 141 in the world. Andre wasn’t too worried, though. He had his genius for tennis, and he had Brad. So when Cliff Drysdale interviewed Andre after a tournament and asked him if his ranking was going to return to its former heights, Andre looked into the camera and smiled that smile of his. “Like Joe Kernen would say, if I were a stock, you should buy me,” Andre said.

Now, to this day I don’t know whether Andre Agassi was a dedicated viewer of my show or Brad Gilbert somehow put him up to making that remark, but I was pretty tickled, let me tell you. Soon afterward, I went out to dinner with Andre, at Campagnola, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Halfway through the meal, in walked Brad Gilbert along with his wife, Kim. They make a pretty nice entrance, Brad and Kim. Kim is a tall, very pretty blond lady, and while I don’t think anyone would call Brad pretty, he does have a certain athletic presence. Of course they spotted our table instantly. Brad saw me and smiled. “Hey, Super Joe!” he called.

The beginning of a beautiful friendship.

From that first night, I liked Brad for his easygoing, slightly off-the-wall style, the way he had of hitting the nail on the head with whatever he said, even if the way he said it seemed sideways at first. He appeared shy, but you discovered in a minute that his convictions about everything— sports, politics, finance, food, human behavior—were strong and deeply held. His knowledge was deep on many fronts. His powerful positive energy and his quiet, humorous way of connecting when he talked with you made me understand why he was a great coach.

I’ve Got Your Back fills out the picture. Who knew that Brad was not just a great tennis mind, but in a very real way, an important management guru? This is a book that can and should be read two different ways: as a source of delight for tennis fans eager to learn how Brad helped two great players, Agassi and Roddick, achieve their potential and as a source of enlightenment for anyone who wants to help the people he or she works with reach their highest potential.

Like many important leaders, Brad started out—in his days as a top-ranked tennis professional—as a bit of a diva. But when he made the move to coaching, he quickly came to the knowledge held by the Level 5 Leaders in Jim Collins’s Good to Great: that personal humility in the service of a greater cause (the success of the team) is the most effective style of all.

When Brad started working with Andre Agassi, he’d never coached before, and so maybe a certain amount of humility came easy in those early days. He started thinking hard about what his own college coach, Tom Chivington—“Chiv”—had done and how he had done it. What he realized right away was that Chiv had taught in the best way possible: by example.

Brad’s coach was that rarest of creatures: a strong but humble man, a natural Level 5 leader. Chiv had a quiet voice, enormous positive conviction, and when he traveled with Brad on the pro tour, the simple desire to do whatever it took to make Brad comfortable and at ease with himself, to put him in the frame of mind to win. This meant everything from getting laundry done to booking practice courts to scouting opponents. Chiv worked hard and cheerfully because he loved his work. He never raised his voice. He was an inspiration, commanding respect by acting respectfully.

So Brad set about adapting his own personal style—not merely copying Chiv’s. He emphasized his best points (enthusiasm, engagement, awareness) and toned down his emotionalism and negativity. He extended his amazing powers of tennis observation to life off the court, learning important lessons about courtesy and humility from Agassi. Coach and player’s respect for each other grew throughout their relationship and past it.

Then Brad took the lessons he’d learned to his work with Andy Roddick, and the relationship flowered. Each continues to learn from the other—and I know Brad is touched, amused, and inspired by Andy’s youthful enthusiasm. The flexibility to adapt to a new style was one of the foundations Brad brought along from his earlier work. You can see the results on the sports pages.

Many of the images we have of coaches are negative: They’re tough; they yell; they humiliate. Brad Gilbert, who is strong without being callous, is a very different kind of coach. One of his biggest points of pride is his ability to pay attention—whether scouting opponents or listening to a player. I would humbly suggest that anyone who pays attention to the multiple lessons in this book will feel inspired and gain the power to become inspiring.

We’re all coaches.
—Joe Kernen of CNBC’s Squawk Box

I’ve Got Your Back

Prologue: Mr. Gilbert to Serve

A winning strategy takes guts, determination, and confidence that you can beat the other guy. How did humility get into it?
“Hey, boss. I got breakfast.”
—B.G.

Midtown Manhattan, August of 2003, and I’m on my way to buy Andy Roddick breakfast. Andy’s back at the hotel, sleeping in: He’s got a big day of practice ahead out at Flushing Meadows. Though he’s just days away from turning twenty-one, this is his fourth U.S. Open, and it isn’t overstating the case to say that the eyes of the tennis world are upon him. Since I started coaching him in June, at the Queen’s tournament in London, Andy has gone on a blistering run, winning twenty-seven hard-court matches against one loss, and taking three hard-court titles in July and August, at Indianapolis, Montreal, and Cincinnati. He’s number 4 in the world going into the Open. Suddenly he can’t walk three steps without someone shoving a microphone in his face and asking if he’s the Future of American Tennis. No pressure! My job is not just to prepare him for the tournament but to keep him on an even keel. Which means making him as comfortable as possible. Which, at this moment, means buying him breakfast.

There’s a little deli on the East Side that makes bacon and eggs on a bagel just the way he likes it. A lot of people like the way these guys make breakfast—there’s a line behind the counter that begins as soon as you walk in the door. I wait my turn. I’m wearing my Reebok warm-ups against the slight chill of the morning; my trademark black shades are propped up on top of my head. I’ve just turned forty-two years old, and there are a couple of strands of gray in my wiry black hair. I haven’t shaved yet this morning, so I’m even woollier than normal.

My turn comes up, and one of the guys behind the counter nods to me. He recognizes me from yesterday morning. It doesn’t matter to him that I used to be the number-4 tennis player in the world, or that I’m coaching the hottest kid on the pro tour. What matters to him is that I want two bagels, one with bacon and eggs, one with plain scrambled. To him I’m just a middle-aged guy in tennis clothes ordering breakfast.

That’s fine with me. I enjoy the piece of fame I have in the tennis world; outside of that world I get recognized a little bit, but not a lot. I like people, I like to talk, and I don’t need for someone to be in awe of me to have a good conversation. The counter man hands me my bag. I pay for the food, leave a couple of bucks in the tip cup, and head up the block to Starbucks. Andy wants an iced caramel macchiato to go with his bagel.

After I score the coffee, I flip out my cell phone and call up to his room. “Hey, boss, I got breakfast,” I say. “You ready? Excellent. I’ll be up in a minute. See you, dude.”

Now, I know what a few of you are thinking. Here’s Brad Gilbert, made a few bucks over thirteen and a half years on the pro tour. Had a pretty good record against people like Jimmy Connors, Boris Becker, Andre Agassi, Michael Chang, and Pete Sampras. Coached Agassi for eight years, to five Grand Slam titles and a thirty-week number-1 run in 1995. What is he doing going out to buy breakfast for a 21-year-old kid?

And what am I doing calling a kid young enough to be my son boss? Have I fallen on hard times?

The answer to that last question is no. And as for the first two, I’ll give you the beginning of an answer by filling in one bit of description I left out earlier. As I’m walking around Midtown Manhattan getting Andy Roddick his bagel and coffee, I’m smiling. I couldn’t be happier. I love my job, and I want to tell you why.
Enthusiasm can’t be faked. It must be found.

1. Tennis Lessons, Life Lessons

A coach shouldn’t be just a boss, or a teacher, but a protector.

“John Wooden had so much love for talking about the team, and the foundation of the team, that he would never discuss a single player. He inspired every one of his players to put aside his ego in pursuit of excellence. How did he do it? By putting aside his own ego first.”
—B.G.

Some people call me a great coach. After all, they say, I’ve taken two tennis players—one of them, Andre Agassi, slightly stuck in neutral and not playing the way he should; the other, Andy Roddick, a hot-tempered kid with genius but less than great discipline—to the very pinnacle of the game, at the very point when the world was starting to think about counting them out. There must be a magic wand in my tennis bag!

There is no wand. To those who call me great, I say thanks for the compliment, which I respectfully decline.

This isn’t fake modesty. I love what I do, and I think I’m very good at it. But I am by no means infallible. And if I have any special skill—besides knowing as much as almost anybody out there about what goes on inside the 27 by 78 feet of a tennis court—it’s that I’m pretty darn good at paying attention. And I’ve had the amazing fortune to have had at least two great teachers in my life to pay attention to.

One of them is named Andre Agassi.

What’s this? Isn’t the player supposed to learn from the coach, rather than the other way around?

Well, sure—sometimes. But show me a coach (or a boss) who doesn’t listen—really listen— and I’ll show you a probable loser. Show me a coach (or a boss) who domineers and demeans, who manages through fear, and I’ll show you an accident waiting to happen. Show me a coach or a boss who doesn’t think it’s just as important to empower the lowliest scrub on the team as it is to cater to the star, and I’ll show you a real short timer.

A true story, about a coach who’s become an inspiration to me, Dick Vermeil, of the Kansas City Chiefs: Last summer, Dick gave a barbecue at his house for the entire team, not just the stars. Dick did all the cooking and every bit of the cleaning up, all by himself. No caterers, no maids, no hired help. And he was happy to do it. How do you think the Chiefs’ third-string defensive tackle felt after that barbecue?

Like he was ready to move heaven and earth for Dick Vermeil, that’s how.

Likewise, going to get Andy Roddick his morning coffee and egg sandwich when we’re traveling together is one of my favorite things in life. It makes Andy feel totally taken care of; it makes me feel like a powerful guardian. It makes us feel like a team.

In fact, you might say I’m a team player in an individual sport. One of my coaching idols is UCLA’s great former basketball coach, John Wooden. The man is ninety-three years old now, but he’s still an inspiration. I saw Jamal Wilkes interviewed on TV a little while ago—here was a guy in his fifties, his face full of joy as he talked about his coach. (That’s what he still calls him.) The interviewer asked Jamal if he still finds himself doing things in life that Coach Wooden taught him, and Jamal just beamed. “Every day,” he said.

John Wooden has so much love for talking about the team, and the foundation of the team, that he will never discuss a single player. He inspired every one of his players to put aside his ego in pursuit of excellence. How did he do it? By putting aside his own ego first.

An expression I’ve used with both Andre and Andy is, “I’ve got your back.” That says it all about me, in a nutshell. I’ve got your back. If it was four in the morning, and my guy called me up and said, “I need you to come over,” I wouldn’t ask what it was about. I wouldn’t think twice. I would think once, and this is what my thought would be: If it’s important enough for him to call on me at that hour, it’s important enough for me to go. And whatever the situation was, we would figure it out. That’s just the way I am. Or, I should say, the way I learned to be.

It all started with Chiv—Tom Chivington, the tennis coach of Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California. Foothill is a community college, a two-year institution, a stop along the way for kids who, for whatever reason—emotional, financial, academic—need a little boost before they can make it in a four-year school.

I was a bit different. True, I was never much of a student (to put it mildly): Graduating from college wasn’t my dream. No, I had this nutty idea that I could become a professional tennis player.

How nutty? In 1979 I was the number 35 junior player in the country. Which sounds pretty good—until you realize that at most only six or seven of the top ten juniors ever make it to the pros. I was a scrawny little runt who’d done amazingly well for a guy who didn’t have much of a serve, volley, or backhand. My success, such as it was, was pretty much based on the fact that I was, first of all, fast on my feet and second, one tough little scrapper. It didn’t matter if the other guy was bigger, stronger, better—I just kept coming. Never gave up. Took no prisoners. You’d be surprised how many matches that’ll win you.

I was originally recruited to Arizona State, a good tennis school, but as soon as I reported to Tempe that fall, the coach who’d signed me got fired. The new coach brought in his own players, and I was told I could take a backseat. I decided to relocate. Foothill was close to my home in Piedmont, California, and for a junior college, it had a very strong tennis reputation, thanks to its coach, Tom Chivington.

On January 2, 1980, I reported to Foothill, their hot new singles prospect—and a definite question mark, in the coach’s eyes. I was five foot eight, 120 pounds soaking wet, with big hair and a big attitude. (Little did I know that one day a kid named Andy Roddick—a kid who wasn’t to be born for two more years—would give me a very hard time about that big hair.) Chiv, who talked softly but looked you right in the eye, put me on the spot. He’d heard I was a bit of a bad actor on the court.

I saw right away that this was a man I had to be straight with. I swallowed. “I’ve stepped over the bounds a few times,” I admitted.

“Can we work on that?” Chiv asked me.

I didn’t have to think twice. “That’s what I’m here for,” I told him.

It was the right answer. That day, for some reason, Chiv saw I was a work in progress and decided to take me on as a project. He knew I didn’t have much game, but I almost made up for it with my fighting spirit. He resolved then and there to make a player out of me.

I told you I had mediocre strokes—the truth is that one of my shots was even worse than that. My backhand was strictly a defensive shot, pushed rather than struck, and I couldn’t get out of jail with it. Any guy with a strong serve could spin it to my left side, cruise in to net, and have me for lunch.

Lots of coaches had tried to get me to change, but they were always totally negative about it. “You have to do it like this or you’re never going to be any good,” they’d tell me. Or, “If you don’t go to a two-handed backhand, you have no hope. Your backhand sucks. Your grip is terrible.” It was always, “You can’t, you won’t.” And my first thought was always, “How good were you?” That was my brashness talking. But I couldn’t help it—it’s always really ticked me off when someone tells me I can’t do something. For a long time, my anger drove me more than anything else.

I could tell right away that Chiv was different. He was quiet and friendly—he had an incredibly calm voice—but he was firm at the same time. I knew he liked me, yet he also wasn’t about to put up with any crap from me. When I showed up twenty minutes late to my very first tennis practice, he said, “That’s the last time you will ever show up late—ever.” I was genuinely puzzled: Nobody had ever called me on that before. But Chiv said, “If you don’t come on time, you do not respect me.” I was never late—for anything—again. In fact, I’m notorious for showing up a half hour early for everything.

I respected Chiv because he clearly knew what he was talking about, because he radiated self- respect and quiet authority, and because every day, at every practice, he was pumped just to be there—excited about working with every guy on the team, from the strongest to the weakest. I knew right away it was for real: That’s the kind of thing you just can’t fake. Chiv had been at Foothill his entire career, since the school opened its doors in the mid-sixties. He could have gone to many other schools, because he was a great coach, but he ended up just loving Foothill and creating a great tennis program there. His love for his job and the school were more important to him than personal prestige. That attitude was infectious. Some people would show up and act like, “Shit, I’m at a junior college.” The first day I got there and met Chiv, I knew I was in the right place.

Positiveness was something that had been missing from my tennis career up to that point. I was tough, I was determined—but I was negative. Junior tennis had felt like a grind to me. I loved the game, but I hated the dog eat dog.

Chiv’s spirit was contagious, and I caught it. I wanted to work hard and do well; I wanted to please him. I had always lived for competition, but now I began to love it.

The next lesson took a little longer. A positive fighting spirit was all well and good, but I needed a backhand to go with it. Chiv had a friend with a private court, and on weekends he and I would go over there with a basket of balls, and he’d feed me five hundred backhands. The goal was to try and turn my defensive chip into an offensive topspin shot without changing my funky continental grip. It ain’t easy—try it sometime.

But after two months, I figured it out: Suddenly I could hit over my backhand with confidence. And miraculously, something else happened at the same time. I grew. Five inches and five pounds in eight weeks. All at once, I was a six-foot-one-inch, 125-pound beanpole.

The weight would come, but now that I had the height—and the stroke—I started to turn the tables on the competition. Suddenly, guys who had been regularly cleaning my clock, 6–2 and 6– 1, were falling to me by the same scores. By the end of my freshman year I had gone from being a semi-crappy former junior to a player who was ready, I thought, to play on the pro tour. Except for one thing: I lost in the finals of the California state championships. “I think you need to show me you can at least be number 1 in California,” Chiv said, “before you go on to the next level.”

He was right, as usual. I corrected that situation the following year. Not only did I win the state championships, I didn’t lose a single varsity match as a sophomore at Foothill. I also made the Junior Davis Cup team, the first junior-college player ever to do so. But Chiv had more to teach me. Even though I was the clear-cut number 1 on the Foothill team, head and shoulders above everybody, he made me defend my spot in challenge matches. He didn’t want me getting above myself or complacent; he also didn’t want anyone else on the team to feel that the coach was playing favorites. If I was going to be a star, I had to show it through my deeds, not my attitude.

I was hot to drop out after sophomore year and start playing the pro tour. Chiv had a different idea. “You should go win the NCAA Championships,” he told me. “It’s just a waste of time,” I told him. Chiv gave me a look. “You only have one shot in your life at trying to win the NCAA,” he said. “And if you win, it could give you a big boost when you go out on the tour”—Nike and Adidas were giving out some pretty big contracts in those days to NCAA winners.

I saw his point.

In January of 1982, I transferred to Pepperdine University in Malibu in order to be eligible for the NCAA Championships. (My relationship with Chiv would have another chapter, even though I didn’t know it at the time.) I stayed at Pepperdine exactly one semester, playing under the one- of-a-kind Allen Fox, a great tennis mind and a quirky character, who taught me a bit more about staying positive. I remember one time I was playing like crap in a match, down 5–2 in the third set. It had turned into the kind of match I call a trunk slammer: When you’re all ready to throw your sticks in your gear bag, throw the bag in the trunk of your car, and get the hell out of there. Foxy came out onto the court, walking his goofy little duckwalk, looked at me, grinned, and said, “You got him right where you want him.” I said, “Coach, what are you talking about? I’m down 5–2 in the third.” “No problem,” Foxy said. “He’s so nervous about winning, you can take it from him, right here.” It changed my whole mind-set about the match. Foxy always used to say, “You’re never going to get three games back at once. Get one game back. Start with one game— then maybe you’ll get two.”

Often as not, it worked out just that way.

The NCAAs, though, were a different story. I had a great run in the tournament, then in the final I came up against Mike Leach, a huge-serving lefty from the University of Michigan. And I was guilty of two things: The first was arrogance. I simply assumed I was going to win that tournament. I had geared my entire game for the last half-year toward this moment; I had done everything right. In my mind, the title was mine already. The check was in the mail.

Mike Leach had a different plan.

The final score was 7–5, 6–3. In retrospect, I did several things wrong, including playing not to lose (always a big mistake) and not digging down when things got tight. I think maybe I got steamrolled mentally because I expected it to come a little easier. And because I was surprised at his game.

My worst mistake was not having the foggiest idea, before I walked out onto that court, what kind of tennis player Mike Leach was. I’ve heard it said that John McEnroe never scouted an opponent. Well, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Mac’s a tennis genius. And it’s nice to be a genius, but those of us who aren’t have to work extra hard. For two weeks after that NCAA final, I walked around like I’d been kicked in the groin. Then I straightened up and came to my senses. Throughout my two years at Foothill and my short time at Pepperdine, I’d been pretty careful about at least watching my opponents warm up. This time, I hadn’t been careful at all. Now I was on my way to the pros (with a small endorsement contract from Nike), where the competition would be much, much tougher. And I decided I was going to pay very, very close attention.

The tennis immortal Bill Tilden said, “Never change a winning game; always change a losing game.” The great coach Tom Chivington said something just as important, in my opinion: “When do you change a losing game? When you have a better plan.”

My first summer as a touring tennis pro, the summer of 1982, was rough. I was just one of hundreds of hungry young wannabes: Every one of us could play, every one of us desperately wanted a spot on the main tour. The only way to get there was to accumulate ATP points, and the only way to get those points was to play satellite tournaments and qualifiers. It was not glamour time. It was plane rides and bus rides, cheap motels (with three guys in a room) and fast food. It was bad practice courts or no practice courts. A lot of guys weren’t up for the grind. They got homesick, they got injured, they dropped out.

But I was happy to be there. This was what I wanted to do with my life; I’d never imagined anything else. Even when it was 100 degrees and 200 percent humidity in Monroe, Louisiana, or Little Rock, Arkansas, or Sioux City, Iowa, I was thrilled to be out there battling, playing for a few dollars and a couple of points. I didn’t win any of the tournaments on that satellite, but I came in fourth overall, which was good enough to get me into my first event on the main tour, the Washington Star International in Washington, D.C. I won my first round, a rough three- setter against Derek Tarr of South Africa, and lost in the second, to a Czech named Jiri Granat. I had picked up a few points and was now 190th in the world.

During my first year in the pros, I saw more and more of the up-and-comers come and go. It wasn’t just homesickness and injuries and the tough conditions at minor tournaments like Taipei that did them in; it was losing. Every tour hopeful had been hot stuff at some point in his life—in the juniors, in college. But once you started mixing it up with the world’s best, you had to be ready to take some falls. It didn’t feel good to lose, but you had to learn to shake it off and move on.

I was just good at that, I guess. I wasn’t little anymore—I’d hit my fighting size of six one and 175 pounds—but I was still tough.

But tough ain’t enough. You have to be smart, too. You have to have a plan. If you lose to a guy, you can’t exactly go punch him. You can’t really do anything—except make sure you get a piece of him the next time you meet.

Well, there are two ways to accomplish that. One is to get better. But even improving your game won’t take you the whole way. As I said in Winning Ugly, every victory in tennis is a combination of one player’s strengths and the other player’s weaknesses. And if you know the other guy’s weaknesses, you have a huge leg up. Back when I was at Foothill, Chiv used to scout all my opponents for me. After my loss in the NCAA finals, I realized that maybe having had someone to do that for me had made me a little lazy. So when I started on the tour, I began keeping a little black book on every guy I played, and even on every guy I saw playing.

I guess a couple of things made me different from other up-and-comers on the tour. True, I had a positive attitude and resilience and foot speed. But other guys had those traits. What set me apart, maybe, was my eye for the game, my memory for how people played it (with the black book to back it up), and my drive to pay attention. Almost every other guy on the tour, when he was finished with his match, couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there—to go back to the hotel room and watch TV, or go pound a few beers. Call me nutty (and a few people did), but I loved to hang out at the venue: watching matches or practice, shooting the breeze with guys in the locker room or training area. (I still love it.) And whenever I was watching tennis, I was taking notes— either in my memory, to write down later, or right into the little book.

There wasn’t any rhyme or reason to my black book. If you’d ever seen it, you would not have been impressed. It was all just scribblings, but those chicken scratches meant a lot to me. I’d write a guy’s name, and jot down three or four things about him: “Forehand—every time he gets tight, he misses it.” Or, “Huge serve in the ad court; his money ball, that out-wide serve.”

After a while, I had quite a few names in there, and quite a few pointed observations. And since the cast of characters on the tour was more or less constant, the odds were pretty good that, just from having watched a guy practice in Hartford, I already had a cool little scouting report on him when I had to face him in the third round in Hong Kong. Maybe I’d be in the bathroom before my match, reading about this guy’s huge out-wide serve in the ad court. So I’d think, Okay, I’ve got to take that away. Even if he hits a winner down the middle, I’ve got to stand in the alley to receive his big serve on the left side. That book was the only coach I could afford in the early days, but it was worth its weight (and then some) in gold.

By the end of 1985, my ranking had climbed to 18 in the world. And since I was finally making some serious money, I decided to marshal my forces for an assault on the top 10. What that meant was hiring a coach. I didn’t have to think twice about who I wanted for the job.

Chiv had now been at Foothill for twenty years, and had made the school a real force in California collegiate tennis. His position of great respect (and a terrific assistant coach, in the person of Dixie Macias) allowed him to put together a deal with the school whereby he could travel with me during the fall quarter, from the U.S. Open till December. Once classes were out for the summer, he came on the road with me again. We worked together ten to fifteen weeks a year, for five years in a row: By 1990, largely thanks to Chiv, I reached my apex of number 4 in the world.

Chiv’s one condition with me was that he be allowed to bring along his beloved wife, Georgie. Georgie coached the women’s tennis team at Chabot College in Hayward, and she’s really the female Chiv—she knows just about as much about the game as Tom does.

What did Chiv do for me? It had a lot less to do with my strokes and footwork (which were pretty sound by that point—they had to be!) than just making my life easy while I fought through the rigors of the tour. When you’re on the road, it means a huge amount to have “little” things like food and laundry and practice-court time taken care of, so you can concentrate on tennis. Chiv would also carefully scout all my potential opponents, taking detailed notes on his ever- present clipboard. And he was an incredibly positive, nonjudgmental guy—the kind of guy who, since I tended to be a bit, shall we say, tightly wound, was very important for me to be around.

Chiv’s levelheadedness meant a tremendous amount to me. There was never an angry word between us. No matter how badly I played, he never yelled at me once. (A lot of coaches, even in tennis, are of the Vince Lombardi/Bobby Knight ream-’em-out-and-wake-’em-up persuasion.) And no matter how beautifully I won, unless it was a final, he never wanted either of us to get too excited. “Let’s figure out what we’re going to do tomorrow,” Chiv would say.

Back to the meals and laundry for a second. At the time Chiv was in his mid-forties. And by now this must be ringing a bell for you: Wasn’t there something strange about a middle-aged guy, a man of dignity and accomplishment, doing laundry and fetching breakfast for a guy in his mid- twenties?

My answer to that is: There are no menial jobs, only menial people. Chiv brought every ounce of his dignity and accomplishment to his work with me. And the main thing is, he loved the work. He loved me and believed in me. He was proud of his part in propelling me into professional tennis. And he was delighted to be able to do anything he could to help me achieve my potential. Back then, if I had called him at four in the morning with some problem, he wouldn’t have asked any questions: He would’ve said, “I’ll be right over.” (I half suspect he still might.) He had my back.

His work made me feel totally taken care of; it made him feel like a powerful guardian. It made us feel like a team.

Neither of us knew it then, but Chiv was preparing me for my next step in life, a step I’d never dreamed of.

Reassess your commitment to being a team player. No matter how good you are, you can do better.

Thanks to Tom Chivington—and, to give myself some credit, my own development as a human being—I learned a tremendous amount over the fourteen years between the day I first stepped onto the Foothill campus and 1994, the year that would be my last on the pro tour. I learned to love playing tennis, and to pay very close attention to every aspect of the game. I learned about something seemingly small but actually huge—the value of the clock.

There were a dozen other lessons, too, but one of them was so big that it took me a while to get my mind around it. I saw how Chiv’s humility—putting Foothill’s importance, and then my importance, before his own—had made him a great coach. I loved and appreciated every molecule of that man’s being. But that was Chiv, I thought. I was Brad, a different guy altogether. Humility wasn’t something for me: I needed my ego to power me through the very significant challenges of the men’s professional tennis tour. When you’re going up against ultraskilled, ultratough competitors every day of the week, being humble doesn’t cut it.

That’s the way it seemed to me at the time, anyway. Unbeknownst to me, however, I was about to acquire a new teacher.