Coaching Top Performers

Excerpted from
I've Got Your Back: Coaching Top Performers from Center Court to the Corner Office
By Brad Gilbert, James Kaplan

With Andy, there's definitely been a learning curve. The good news is that we hit it off right away: The chemistry was there. One bin thing Andy and Andre have in common with each other (and with me) is that they're both gregarious. They (and I) like to get out and have fun, see people. I could work with someone who didn't like to go out, who preferred keeping to himself, but it would be harder for me.

But any relationship is complicated, even after you think you've scoped out all the angles. Andy and I had great mutual respect, which helped us from the get-go. I might have been twenty-one years older, but I wasn't his dad-he already had a dad-and I wasn't his older brother. He already had one of those, too. I was his coach. I was there to provide a service, in the highest sense of the word. There's a humility to it, and I've come to understand the power that humility can have, in the same way that I understand the weakness of arrogance. What are good manners but a form of humility?

A form of humility that also conveys strength of character.

Early on in my work with Andre, I began calling him boss-and I did the same thing when I started coaching Andy. Andy likes it, not because it makes him feel superior to me, but because it makes him feel taken care of-I have his back.

But the new boss is definitely a different man from the old boss. For one thing, Andy is the messiest guy I've ever met-and that's saving something. I'm not exactly a neat freak when I'm on the road. Andre was. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Andre Agassi is the cleanest person I've ever encountered. He does amazing laundry-he travels with his own fabric softener. He irons his own jeans. Sometimes when we were traveling together, he'd gel so upset at the state of my clothes that he would lake my laundry and do it for me.

This is not Mr. Roddick. Any hotel room where Andy's staying is a tornado trail of clothing, CDs, and athletic equipment. Any match that Andy's playing is a potential drama, before he even steps on the court: I can't tell you the number of times he's forgotten his ankle braces, or even his shoes. Shoes! Once, just before his night match at a tournament in Basel, Andy told me, smiling, that he'd remembered to bring his braces this time-but that he had two left tennis shoes in his bag. This was twenty minutes before an 8 P.M. match, and it was ten minutes each way to the hotel.

I guess I was looking worried. Then I smiled.

"Hey, Andy-K.I.T. " I said.

"K.I.T.?" Andy asked.

I explained. One of my favorite films is Bowfinger, starring Steve Martin as a sleazy producer and Eddie Murphy as Kit Ramsey, a nervous action-picture star whose mantra (after the letters of his first name) is "Keep it together"- K.I.T. In a funny-serious way, K.I.T. kind of became our mantra too, something we'd say with a smile whenever things got lough.

This was definitely a K.I.T. moment. I got in a car with a nice lady from tournament transportation, and she proceeded to gun it, James Bond-style, through the narrow streets of Basel. Halfway to the hotel we hit a traffic jam.

"Do you know a shortcut?" I asked her.

She nodded, screeched into a U-turn, and veered down a narrow alley. We were flying down this alley, and all of a sudden there was a car stopped in front of us, waiting for a parking spot. So I told the nice lady to drive up onto the sidewalk. She did. But as we passed the stopped car, a guy started banging on the window, saving that we'd almost hit someone on the sidewalk. And the guy and his girlfriend were on bikes, and the guy's bike was parked directly in front of us.

I stepped out of the car and chucked his hike as far as I could. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

I was back at the tournament at 7:57 P.M., handing Andy his shoes. And, cool as a cucumber, he put the shoes on and walked out onto the court and beat Olivier Rochus of Belgium, 6-4, 6-4. Just another day at the office for player and coach. Andy definitely put a few more gray hairs on my head that night. Come to think of it, maybe he's responsible for all of them. He isn't a retiring personality by any stretch. After that first practice, the one where I told him to lose the orange visor, he gave me a shot right back. "I can't believe how eighties your taste in music is" he said, picking up one of my Steve Miller CDs and making a face. "Or is this seventies? Brad, you've got to open up a little bit. Try some new things"

I soon found out just how new he meant.