Sport and Strategy

I recently finished reading ‘I’ve got your back’ from Brad Gilbert (BG). The book is a personal memoir of one of the most successful coaches in world of tennis who has trained top players like Andre Agassi, Andy Roddick and Andy Murray. The focus of the book is to bring out the importance of technique in psychological and technical aspects of the game. Being a business graduate, I always associated words like strategy, techniques etc with the corporate world. I always thought that success in sport world was determined more by in-born talent than anything else but this book changed my view to a large extent. No doubt, Brad Gilbert is known more as a strategist than a coach. When we talk about coaches, the image that normally comes to mind is a motivational, ‘gyan’ dispersing guy. To his credit, BG is not like this and believes more in doing his homework and doing it thoroughly. He believes in what he calls the ‘meats and potatoes’ or the ‘X’s and O’s which basically mean getting your hands dirty and your back very sweaty.

BG has brought out the psychological aspects on coaching in the game very well. The title of the book, ‘I’ve got your back’ conveys it all. He says that coaching is all about making the player feel that someone has got his back. So, the player may be battling it out alone on the field but the coach has to give him the mental comfort so he feels that he is part of a team. Team concept is something new in this individual driven, super competitive sport of tennis but plays a very important part in the player’s psyche. Now, we know why we see parents of players/movie stars hanging around on the sets playing the role of supportive mental guardians.

The working style of BG involves a high level of emotional intelligence. He has to know when to push the envelope and when to hold himself back. He has to know the player very thoroughly to be able to make the maximum possible impact. Remember we are talking about world class players here. These are people who have reached to this level with a lot of hard work and great in-born talent. So, BG has to add significant value to the player’s output to keep himself employed. He does this by collecting information on competitors and by helping the players in their practice. This involves helping the players in improving their technical skills.

In the end it’s interesting to see how BG’s style of play impacted his own performance before he became a coach. Unlike many high ranking professional players, BG did not have a powerful serve, a dangerous forehand, a flashy volley or a lightning smash. But he built his game destroying the opponent’s rhythm. He was one of the sport’s top strategists as a player. Both his style of play and his mental approach brought him wins and he reached a high of World No. 4 in Jan 1990.