Winning Ugly: Mental Warfare in Tennis--Lessons from a Master

Brad Gilbert is a former tennis professional who was born on August 9, 1961 in Oakland. His world ranking peaked at #4 in 1990, and he is an Olympic bronze medalist. After retiring from the pro tour, he began coaching, and oversaw the development of notable greats such as Andre Agassi, Andy Roddick, Andy Murray, and Kei Nishikori. Gilbert now works as an ESPN commentator and tennis analyst.
I did not pick out this book myself; it was instead given to me as a birthday present. Although, I was already looking for a tennis instruction book like Winning Ugly. I love to play tennis, and have been playing competitively since I was around 10, so I devour any material that helps me improve and win more. I expected Gilbert to outline what he was thinking during matches, and how he prepared both his mind and body to win even when the odds were stacked against him.
My expectation was accurate, but Gilbert did expand on a few more topics that I had not thought about. For example, he emphasized paying attention to who was doing what to whom during the match, and before the match he suggests analyzing a player’s weaknesses and how other people beat them: “1. What do I want to make happen? 2. What do I want to prevent from happening?” (Gilbert 6).
There are a few things that separate Winning Ugly from the other tennis books I have read. First of all, all of the advice is coming from an author who made it all the way to the upper echelons of the pro tour; clearly he must be doing something right. Secondly, the information is presented in a clear format that is easy to implement in real life: “You want to get the eyes and hands working together. Don’t run out on the court and start banging groundstrokes. Especially if you’re a B or C player and especially if you haven’t played for several days” (Gilbert 44). “But I also bring rackets with different string tensions. Some are strung looser and some tighter. The reason is that on a day when control is a problem, I might go to a tighter string tension for better control” (Gilbert 26).
Finally, the quality of the advice is great, and I have noticed an improvement in my focus and preparedness for a tennis match. My body and mind are both more in tune and warmed up when I start to play, and I attribute this change to the advice given in the book: “Continue the physical warming up of your body and mind that began with stretching and pre - match visualization” (Gilbert 43). The information in Winning Ugly is easy to follow, and above all I think it is a great addition to my tennis game.
The message of Winning Ugly can be summed up with this one quote: “The mind is a terrible thing to waste and tennis players waste it all the time.”

This is a good instructional book, and a great introduction to competitive tennis at the club level. It concentrates on the analytical side of the game. It's also a solid review for experienced players. Author Brad Gilbert looks beyond stroke technique, and concentrates on how to dissect match play. Audio version did the book justice.

I just finished this ugly tennis book, haha.

I’ve played tennis for about 20 years now and seem to love it more than ever. I started to play competitively again earlier this year and picked up this book off my shelf for a refresher.

When I played as a junior, I believe I was pretty good but a mental numbnuts on court. I never prepared correctly by sleeping, dieting, developing a plan, being aware of my weapons and weaknesses, or anything else. To my first high school coach, this was all probably extremely obvious, and she let me borrow her copy of this book either Freshman or Sophomore year. I poked through a few chapters, but about 15 years later I’ve finally read the full thing (I never gave it back to her: another reason I was a high school numbnuts).

First, would it have benefitted me to read the whole thing while I was a junior player? Probably not, but that would have been my own fault. I was pretty aware that sleeping well, analyzing your opponent, and adjusting your game were all keys to victory, but I don’t think I could’ve convinced myself to actually do any of those at the time. When I was younger, I was totally aloof towards anything that mattered, which is recognizable now as arrogance or stubbornness.

Do I think I got anything out of reading it now? Kind of. Yeah, I’ll say more or less. I think I’m a better student about everything now. One hump is that the book reads like an ancient text of tennis, reported in a dated, pre-internet voice that's equivalent to home remedies like keeping nickels in your pocket to avoid the flu. It doesn’t help that Gilbert is a cornball the whole way through. I think starting chapters with quotes from his mom about how he was a precocious chore dodger are pretty cringe. When he sagely declared the secret energy drink to be “water”, I rolled my eyes a little. DRM is a frequent acronym that means “Don’t Rush Me”, and he offers all kinds of eccentric ways one might put this into action during a match: touch your strings, tie your shoes, move your towel from one side of the court to the other, go touch a rock in the corner after every point. Very "grandma's home remedy" tennis right there.

But that last kind of advice is also where the dated cornballness kind of starts to appeal to me. There’s definitely a dedication to just doing what works because it seems to work. Even if it’s not science or scripture, he’s tried these things and for some reason they bring results. One of my favorite bits of advice is keeping snacks in your bag, and when Brad recommends a candy bar he mentions that some people might say not to eat that much sugar since you’ll crash, but if that happens just to eat another, “who knows”. These imperfect pieces of advice appeal to me maybe just sentimentally. He sounds like coaches I had growing up, and maybe they’re borrowing their voices from books and coaches like this.

Right now, it’s really easy to learn tennis strategy and technique off YouTube, and unfortunately these channels are pressured to provide quick fixes and attractive visual branding in order to maintain and grow an audience. I see all kinds of bizarro advice based on buzzwords about learning a “modern forehand” or applying “kinetic chain” principles. The videos that have the most views often have somebody swinging a racket with an arbitrary red circle around their wrist or racket and the words “DO THIS” or “STOP DOING THIS” and then they talk long enough to get YouTube ad revenue and plug old videos. I at least think this book is better than those videos, and the current trend of horrible thumbnails even makes me warm up to the horrendously ugly book cover image.

So I like this book as an extended lesson that you need to revisit and think about time and again. It’s definitely more useful than watching Youtube videos, and it gives advice that is probably worth the money from a professional coach but nobody would really want to pay for. The basic message is that most players will go out to the court brain dead, and that you can do that or you can try to come out and apply your mind to something else besides your personal mechanics. Brad spends 200 pages trying to prove his message that 10% of the time you’re going to get your ass kicked no matter what, 10% of the time you’re going to kick their ass no matter what, and 80% of the time the match is up for grabs and that the only thing that matters in competition is the score at the end of the day. I think it’s encouraging. I can see it making tennis more fun, freshening up your mindset a bit, and maybe actually getting a few more wins.

I’ll say a big bonus are anecdotes about old pros too, what Brad would tinker with during a match against Agassi, Sampras, and the rest of the gang. It’s notable that he talks very highly about Jim Courier’s game, who had won 4 majors in the 2 years before the book came out, but then never won one again afterwards. Not everything from 1994 tennis can age as well as the rest of his advice.

If you're a tennis player and if you remember watching the greats of the 80s and 90s (Lendl, McEnroe, Connors, Chang, Becker, Agassi, Sampras,...) on the tube, you're going to breeze through Gilbert's book.
Alternating between on the one hand practical advice on how to improve your match play not by working on your strokes, but on the analysis of strengths and weaknesses and how to make these work to your advantage, and on the other hand anecdotes of how his own approach fared and improved against the iconic players of the game, Gilbert provides a great story on how preparation, a plan, alertness and resolve can decide a match rather than mere physicality and pure skill.

I read this a number of times over the years, and I think I am overdue a re-read so I can come back to the courts with a winning mentality when they re-open after the lockdown. Lets just say that for me, this is simply the best book about how to gain those little edges to win at tennis. And some are so simple that you have to wonder why you never thought of them yourself. Totally recommended.

Brad Gilbert's book contains simple but excellent advice for club players and tips from the pros that can make a difference in tournament matches. I found useful reminders of basic equipment, warm-ups, strategies like never serving first, play at 65% but consistently at first, the importance of the first two games, what to do when you're behind and in front, how to use psychological strategies and guard against those used by the opponent. I was distracted by, and skimmed through, his frequent reports of his own tournaments with former greats; many of them seemed to be just cathartic.

I would rather have had just the tips with brief examples. But it's his book :)

Great book on the mental side of tennis.

The book really helped me understand the mental strategy of tennis, including how to play against certain types of players, how to work your opponents weaknesses and into your strengths.
Good, easy read.

Great advice for the thinking tennis player

The ideas Brad Gilbert shares on how to improve the mental side of the game are both practical and challenging. The approach Brad recommends sound simple but require deep concentration and analytical thinking. Fortunately Brad has done much of the analysis to help in various real world situations. Our task is to assess the situation, and then execute these tactics effectively. That is much harder to do than say, of course. The entertaining real world stories and examples, while slightly dates, are timeless.