Brad Gilbert and Winning Ugly: The Tactical School of Tennis Coaching

This is the first in a series on the schools of thought behind modern tennis coaching. Later profiles cover Nick Bollettieri and the academy model, and Rick Macci and the technique-first approach. We start with Brad Gilbert because his ideas are the most immediately usable by a player who cannot change their technique by Saturday.

Who he is

Brad Gilbert was a professional on the men's tour from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s. He reached a career-high ranking of No. 4 in the world in 1990 and won twenty singles titles, which is a remarkable record for a player who, by his own cheerful admission, had no great weapon. He was not fast, his serve was ordinary and his strokes were unremarkable. What he had was an unusual ability to work out how to beat the player on the other side of the net, and the discipline to do it point after point.

That is the whole premise of Winning Ugly: Mental Warfare in Tennis, which he wrote with Steve Jamison and published in 1993. It remains one of the most-read tennis books ever written and is the closest thing the sport has to a tactical manual for ordinary players.

As a coach his record is extraordinary. He coached Andre Agassi from 1994 to 2002, a period that included Agassi's rise to No. 1 and six of his eight major titles. He coached Andy Roddick to the 2003 US Open title and the No. 1 ranking, worked with Andy Murray in 2006 and 2007 as the young Scot moved into the top ten, and had a brief spell with Kei Nishikori. In 2023 he began working with Coco Gauff, who won the US Open that September. Between coaching jobs he has been a long-standing television analyst, which is where many players first encounter his vocabulary.

What Winning Ugly actually argues

The book's title is often misunderstood as an endorsement of gamesmanship. It is not, and Gilbert is explicit about that. "Winning ugly" means winning without your best tennis, by thinking better than the opponent. The central claims:

1. Most matches are decided before the first point

Gilbert puts huge weight on preparation: arriving early, warming up the body properly, having your kit in order, and above all having a plan for the opponent. The warm-up is not for hitting; it is for watching. Which side do they avoid? Do they move well to the forehand corner? Is the second serve attackable? Does the volley look comfortable? By the time the match starts you should know what you are going to do.

2. Play the opponent, not the ball

Club players and juniors almost all make the same mistake: they try to hit good shots. Gilbert's view is that you should try to make the opponent hit bad ones. If their backhand breaks down under pressure, every rally ball goes to the backhand until it stops breaking down. If they hate high balls, hit high balls. If they get impatient, give them nothing to hit and let them miss. It is not elegant and it does not have to be.

3. Know your own game and what you can rely on when nervous

Gilbert is unsentimental about this. Every player has a few shots that hold up under pressure and a few that do not. Under stress, play the first group and avoid the second, even if the second contains your flashiest shot. The book's advice on the tight moments of a match (break points, 30–30, the first two points of a game) is that this is when you go to your most reliable patterns, not your most spectacular.

4. Momentum is real and you can manage it

A long section of the book deals with the rhythm of a match: slowing things down when the opponent is on a run, speeding them up when you are, taking the full time between points, using the change of ends to reset. Gilbert describes the first two games after a set has been won or lost as a danger zone where attention wanders, and the player who refocuses fastest usually takes the early lead in the new set.

5. Deal with gamesmanship calmly

The book has a well-known chapter on opponents who cheat, stall or argue. Gilbert's advice is practical rather than moral: do not engage emotionally, know the rules, and call the referee early rather than seething for a set. The point is not to be a hero; it is to stop the opponent's behaviour affecting your tennis.

How it shows up in his coaching

What is striking about Gilbert's coaching career is that he worked almost exclusively with players who had far more talent than he did and made them better by changing how they thought rather than how they hit. Agassi has described the partnership as the moment he started to understand how to construct a match instead of simply hitting the ball harder than anyone else. The Agassi of the late 1990s, grinding out slow-court wins with heavy, early forehands to the opponent's weaker side, is Winning Ugly applied by a genius.

With Roddick the emphasis was on building everything around the serve and the forehand and refusing to be drawn into rallies that did not suit him. With Murray, already one of the smartest players of his generation, Gilbert's influence is debated, but the period coincided with Murray's first wins over top-ten players. With Gauff, Gilbert and Pere Riba reorganised her match play around her movement and competitiveness rather than attempting a mid-season rebuild of her forehand, and she won a major within weeks.

The pattern is consistent: identify what the player does well, build the match around it, and stop them losing points to things that can be avoided.

Criticisms of the tactical school

No philosophy is complete and Gilbert's has limits worth naming.

• It assumes a functional game. Winning Ugly can make a 4.0 player into a very hard-to-beat 4.0 player. It cannot make them a 5.0. Technique still sets the ceiling, which is the whole point of the technique-first coaches we cover next.
• Too much thinking can paralyse. Some players, especially juniors, become so busy analysing the opponent that they stop swinging freely. The best tacticians make one decision per point, not five.
• The book is from 1993. Equipment, strings and fitness have transformed the game. The specifics about serve-and-volley and wooden-era patterns are dated, even if the principles hold.
• It can be read as cynical. It is not, but a young player can take the wrong lesson from it and start looking for edges in the wrong places. Parents and coaches should read it alongside the junior.

What a junior or club player can take from it this weekend

1. Watch the warm-up. Pick one weakness in the opponent during the five-minute hit and write it on your hand if you have to. Hit to it when it matters.
2. Write a two-sentence plan before every match. Our first tournament guide has examples.
3. Know your "go-to" patterns. Which serve do you make when nervous? Which rally ball never misses? Use them at 30–30 and on break points. Save the flashy shot for 40–0.
4. Use the full time between points. Twenty seconds is a long time. Decide the next point, breathe out, then play.
5. Refocus hard for the first two games of every set. Treat them as the most important games of the match.
6. Keep a notebook. Gilbert kept detailed notes on every opponent. A junior's version is three lines after every match: what worked, what did not, what to try next time.

None of this requires a new forehand. That is why it belongs first in this series.

Should you read the book?

Yes, with the caveats above. It is short, funny and written for ordinary players. A motivated twelve-year-old can read it; a competitive adult should. Read the chapters on preparation, on the warm-up, and on momentum first. Skip the specific match descriptions from the 1980s if they lose you.

Next in the series

• Nick Bollettieri and the academy model: volume, competition and the Florida factory that produced Agassi, Courier, Seles and Sharapova. What it got right about environment and what it got wrong about burnout.
• Rick Macci and the technique-first approach: the coach who shaped the early games of Venus and Serena Williams, Jennifer Capriati, Andy Roddick and Maria Sharapova, and why he believes efficient technique must come before everything else.

For how these ideas should blend in a child's coaching, see our parents' guide.