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Lemonada.

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I had a great coach, Coach Burns. He didn't have a first name, Larry. I only knew that later. His first name was Coach. And I mentioned it later in the podcast that he told me how to care. And the story that I'm thinking of was we wanted to win, and we were playing our archrivals, and I guess we were ahead, and we just We just blew it, and we lost. And we were in the locker waiting for Coach to come in because we always had to wrap up afterwards. And it's going to sound totally cliché, and I guess it is. But he came in, and just the look on his face, you could tell he'd gone through it. He cared. He didn't care that this was a stupid high school game. This was a gladiatorial contest of the day. And he came in, and he just put his hand over his heart and he said, A pint of blood right from here, right from here. We lost some blood in that game. And we all start crying, the kids. And we're high school boys. We're not easy cryers. And all it was was that weird little cliché, a pint of blood right from here, right from your heart, because it was true.

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It was true because we were believing in him. We were believing in the stakes. The stakes felt high. It was good to suffer like that. It was good to care like that. It was good to bleed like that. And it doesn't matter that it wasn't really something worth caring that much about because it was just really the care that meant something. I'm David Ducouveny, and this is Fail Better, a show where failure, not success, shapes who we are. Brad Gilbert is best known as a tennis coach. He's also known as a tennis commentator who comes up with fun nicknames for the tennis players out there. He's coached Andre Agassi, a legend, and Andre called him the greatest coach of all time. I don't know. For me, it's Larry Burns. For some people, might be Brad Gilbert. Now he's coaching Rising Superstar Coco Gauff. He even trained Zendeya for the movie Challenges. He was a great tennis player himself. He got to number four in the world. He played pro for a dozen years. And I talked to him over Zoom, and behind him, I could see all these tennis rackets. I thought they were just rackets, but they turned out to be like game-played rackets from great players.

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So here's that conversation with Brad Gilbert. Where I wanted to start was... I've learned so much about you preparing for this. I mean, number four in the world, right? And then an amazing coaching career. How did you get... If you can take me back to your childhood and being introduced to tennis and talking to your father about tennis, how did you get to this relentlessly positive coach that I see in front of me right now?

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I had an older brother, older sister. My dad, when he was... My dad had been 30. He had an apartment building. Never played tennis in his life. There were some old rackets left there. So he went out and played with my older brother, who was seven, played one time and he comes back and he made this announcement, That's it. We're playing tennis. And so literally, seriously, these old rackets and presses, that was it. And we started playing. Then instantly, he got my brother and sister lessons. And then he was like, You can play or you can sit there and watch. So I think it just grew out of... First of all, I was probably very competitive, hyper competitive. And then you want to show your older brother and older sister and your dad that you belong. So that's how, literally, my tennis began. And I played my first tournament, I think, when I was six years old.

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Really?

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Yeah. So literally, I'm 62, about to be 63 this year. I've been playing basically my whole life. And there hasn't been a moment where I've been bitter towards it.

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Right. I also grew up wanting to be an athlete, and I was a terrible, terrible loser. In fact, stickball is a game we play in New York. And I was a pretty good baseball player, and I could play with my father's friends. I was good enough when I was 10 to play with them, but they wouldn't play with me because I was such an asshole when I lost. So I had competitive spirit in me as well. But I think I read where your father said, you're going to be a pro and you're going to play Davis Cup.

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When I was 10 years old, I really didn't know what that meant. But David, you know what I I spent my time when I was competing and when I wasn't competing. Let's say I was watching a basketball game or a football game. I was always thinking about tactics, what somebody was trying to do to win. And when I was playing and playing with other people, that's all I was ever thinking about was an angle on how to win. I never was fixated and defeated by losing. I was more always thinking about the strategy on how to find a way to get under somebody's skin or find a way that what I was doing to be more successful. I think that that's how I always thought. I wasn't as successful at it until I got a little bit older and I finally grew. But I think it probably helped me being smaller, but always thinking about a way that I could beat somebody. I love tactics. I didn't get like you got really upset. Nobody likes losing, but I was always questioning myself about my own tactics.

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Where do you think that came from? Is it just your nature? Because it sounds like some people say they fall in love with the game or whatever. It sounds like you fell in love with the game within the game.

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As probably well said, I think I fell in love with just this one word, competing. I love competing. I like trying to take something that someone's trying to take from me, whether or not that was playing one-on-one basketball. I played a million times as a kid's strikeout. You ever play against one guy, draw a chalk on the wall, and you really strike it?

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That's stickball. That's what we call stickball.

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So all of these things that whatever I was doing, that's what I was always trying to figure out how to win.

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And yet I'm remembering Tell me something. You wrote where you said you made this jump by hitting the ball off the wall for a while. If you could just explain that to me for a moment, because I've got this guy who lives for tactics, who lives for the win, and yet you make this leap at some point by hitting the ball off the wall.

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If it wasn't misting today, I had gone and hit on the wall. My kids say I have no Zen. It's probably my only Zen now. Playing some imaginary tournament, playing some imaginary player on the wall is a great way to expand how you think and how you deal with pressure. So it was something I just did And I probably didn't realize how it made me a better player, made me more relaxed, and probably took away my fears.

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Can you tell me why or how?

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Because in your dreams, they're always usually positive. But when I'm playing somebody, that imaginary player on the wall, I never imagine I was fucking losing. It's a good result. Probably the thing that probably made my game made the biggest leap, when I was 18, I was at a junior college called Foohill Junior College. I couldn't believe all of my teammates were thinking about all the negativity in the result on Tuesday when the match is about Friday, if I lose this match, or if I win this match, or what coach is going to say about me. It was all of these things that Basically, bring yourself down and you worry yourself and what the coach is going to think about you if you lose. It was like, I didn't have those feelings. I would literally think about, okay, when I I'm going to play this guy in a couple of days, I'm going to think about tactics right away, right before I go out there and figure out certainly my best way to navigate through this match. I certainly wouldn't be shitting myself on Tuesday for a match Friday, and I wouldn't worry about the result.

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I'm going to think about what I can do, what my strengths to my opponent's weakness could manifest, or what my opponent is trying to do to me. And I'm going to make that work for my advantage.

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Right. Well, the wall has no weakness, so it was good that you were playing the wall. The wall never misses.

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No, I promise you the wall has great discipline. It's like that acting coach that probably is not going to lighten up on you. And so it's the same. It's like, no matter what, it comes back. But in your mind, if you're playing an opponent, you can just do it. My friend Chris Mullen, who I've known for a long time. When I told him the story about the wall, he would tell me about the story of himself shooting free throws by himself, playing that game against another team. And I think it takes a lot of discipline to do one-on-one like that, that you can actually play this game in your mind against an opponent when there really isn't an opponent there.

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When you're playing and you get to number four, but you're feeling like, I'm not as good as Macro, or I never will be? Or what is that feeling like?

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Honestly, it's like, shit, the dudes in front of me were Becker, Edberg, Lendal. And only Lendal was older than me. Becker and Edberg were much younger. My serve needed to be better. I probably needed to be a little more aggressive and fearless, where I think under pressure, I was a little too conservative. I was way too conservative. I hated missing. I hated taking risk. That probably took me as far as I was going to go. I didn't think by any means that I was failure. I mean, literally, when I turned pro, I just hoped that I could make a little bit of dough and have a good time. It's like not everybody can have lead role. I'd have been plenty happy being Ned Bady. I'd have been happy being a great character actor. We all dream of being that, but maybe my skill set wasn't quite that level.

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Yeah. That's probably, I'm going to guess, a lifetime of work that you've been doing in that area. Some people are gifted just naturally. I think they're born resilient. You have kids, I have kids. You can see the One child has that gene, that resilient gene, more than another or not. But if you don't have it, and if it's something that you have to deal with loss a lot like an athlete does, then you have to grow that part of yourself.

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Well, first of all, my coach told me when I turned pro that in a 32 draw, every week, there's 31 losers. Losing doesn't define you. It's how you deal with each situation and how you learn to move forward. A lot of times, a few losses can break players, especially can break young players. You got to be resilient and you got to be willing to understand that tomorrow the sun will rise and you have to rise with it.

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You coach some of the greats: Andy Rodick, Andy Murray, Andre Agassi, now Coco Gaff. And you said that you take losses as a coach harder than as a player, which I find interesting. Can you give me an example of that, of taking a loss harder as a coach than as a player?

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Yeah. As a coach, God, I got a bunch. But I can give you a few of them that just jump out right away. Andre, when I was coaching André, two brutal ones. The '95 US Open, he had won 26 consecutive matches, had the most amazing summer, and then goes out. And just He was a little bit flat in that morning, playing Pete Sampras in the finals of the '95 Open, I could tell, and lost that match 7-5 in the fourth. I felt like someone had taken a knife and stabbed me. Then one other one, just a brutal beat, too, was a 2001 US Open, quarterfinals, four tie breakers. I felt like Andre, at that moment, was the better player. I felt like If had he won that match, he was for sure going to win the US Open. Once again, Pete played an unbelievable match. No breaks the entire match, and it came down to the smallest margins. I felt like Maybe after that one, that was as gutded as I ever was about any match because I felt heartbroken for Andre, and it came down to a few points. I still think about that match.

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It's like it still guts me.

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It's on a loop. There's something I found incredible that you said about Andre, and I'm paraphrasing here, so if I get it wrong, please correct me. It seemed to you that he was trying to be the best player in the world every time he walked out there instead of just beating whoever he needed to beat on the other side of the net. And that's a profound realization on your part and a profound gift, I I think that you gave him, ultimately. And an amazing bit of not just coaching, but of philosophy in general. And I'm wondering how you came to that. It's such a brilliant observation. Had you seen it before in other players? Had you seen it in yourself?

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Well, first of all, I couldn't fucking believe Andre had lost to me four times because he was way better than me. Andre battles perfection, and that's partly because of No matter what he did, his dad was tough on him, it could always be better. He was never satisfied with beating somebody, 6464, 6476. It could always be way better. I told him, The pursuit of perfection doesn't exist. It only makes you miserable chasing something that you're not going to find. You only need to be with your skill set at about 50% of what you can be. If you're 95% of mentally where you should be, you'll win a ton more matches. You just have to be better than the guy on the other side of the net. But you lose so many matches trying to be better than you need to be. If you pull back, don't litter up the stat sheet. Less winners, less enforced errors, you are going to lose so much less. He was blown away that I could... He's more like a complicated Ferrari. I'm a Chevy truck. I see things, I sail. That was in the summer of '94. We were going through a little bit of a bad stretch.

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I told him, All we need to do is win one close match, and everything will kick in for you. He said, You like to win a close match. I want win just two and two. Then, sure enough, he was playing, Andre was playing this guy, David Wheeton, and he had a one three record against him. But I was really confident on that day that he was going to be fine. We went over our tactics. As it turned out, David Wheeton, I'm watching, was playing great. But Andre ended up toughing out Wheeton, like seven, six in the third, saved a couple of match points, and It was like a 10, eight breaker in the third set. Andre was disgusted with himself afterwards. I was so pumped up that I said, You gave yourself an opportunity to compete tomorrow. The most important thing about winning today is now you can get better tomorrow. You live to see another shot. You know what? This is the match you always lose, but you didn't today. So he was literally ready to like, he's thinking this tournament was over. In my mind, it had just started. Good things will happen.

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And literally, he did. He got up and he played better the next day. A second round match, won the tournament, and three weeks later, he won the open. I can tell you now, fast forward 30 years. Coco Gauff shares the exact same issues that Andre did about this whole pursuit of perfection. She was never satisfied with being good, which led to a lot of losses that she probably didn't need to have. It's more about learning about yourself that your good is better than a ton of others, but you just have to accept that and understand that the role can't be perfect every time. Every take can't be spot on. But your interpretation of that is damn good.

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Yeah, it reminds me of a story my dad used to tell me when we would have a catch, when I was three or four, and I'd drop one and I'd explode in anger and frustration. He'd say, Pick it up, throw it back to me. I'll throw you another one. You get the next one. And crying, I'd say, I don't want the next one. I want that one, the one that I dropped. So there's all these psychological barriers that we're born with in many ways. Because my father said to me, as an adult, he said to me when I was an adult, I don't know where that came from. That was not something I ever tried to impart to you, that you needed to be perfect and catch every ball. So the fact that you could break through to Andre at that point in his career, too, shows a lot of trust of him and you. And I think when I read your stuff and when I watch you work, you really take joy in other people's genius. You really take joy in other people's victories. And I think that's why somebody like Andre and Murray and Roddick and now Coco are able to trust you.

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Well, You know what? There's no greater joy, David, than trying to help somebody fulfill their dreams. And David, honestly, when I started coaching, I was playing. And all I was thinking about was Andre had so much talent. And I can just help a little bit. It's the same when I started with Coco, that how am I going to just make her a little bit better? Because their talent is exceptional. That's where you free your own self and look through their lenses. How am I going to help Coco manage what she's doing in the moment to just get a little bit better? Because their good is significantly better than my good. That's why I could free myself from that. I love that challenge. Once I started coaching Coco in Washington last year on the fly, I never got so many text is to fix her forehead, do this, fix this. I'm like, in my mind, people don't realize that you can't just change somebody's grip and change the swing and My brain was, what happens if you did that and it didn't work? You'd be 10 times worse off. You manage with what you got and help them get better.

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That's how I look at it. I love the challenge of that simplicity. Some coaches are guilty, and a lot of sports, of always wanting to coach the same way. They might not have the personnel to that team or person that way, but yet they're fixated. That's the way they are. Andre had a photographic memory which shocked me. He has absolute recall. Rodic and Coco are very similar in that Rodic is a lot like this message is for Mission Impossible. And I'm talking about the one from the '60s that will implode in 10 seconds. So you have to be able to get in, get out quickly. Right. Same with Coco. Coco doesn't like a long dissertation about it. And that's the nuance of coaching, that just because Andre is like that and I'm like that, doesn't mean it's going to be successful for Coco or Andy Rodin. Well, it's also- And the same for parenting.

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Well, that's what I was going to say. There's no prototype kid either. So you've got to be malleable with your coaching technique for each every individual kid.

[00:27:31]

My youngest, who's 26, Zoe, will tell me sometimes when I'm trying to do. Dad, that bullshit that you do on the coach is not working with me. You got to find another... And she's right. Each person, whether or not it's your kid, the person you coach, you have to tap into their strengths and figure out what makes them tick. And most importantly, the biggest thing that you learn from a player to a coach is, I'm not looking through my own lens anymore. I'm looking through their lens and understanding their strengths and weaknesses and removing my brain from what I would do to what they need to do. That's the quickest way to understanding how to be a coach and help them. Sometimes it doesn't work. Some days it doesn't work. I once told Andre this story. He looked at me like I was fucking nuts. When I was up 5'2, I would always tell myself I was 5'2 down. So I would keep pushing and keep driving.

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And you were able to believe that?

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Yeah. And Andre is like, Are you kidding? There's a scoreboard. Everybody knows you can't tell me that bullshit and you think it's going to work. But I could actually make myself believe that because maybe I was a little shallower.

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I don't know if it's shallower, but it's definitely a mental process that you either had access to naturally or you grew it. I don't know if I had access to it.

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It's just the craziness of myself to believe it. I think that that's probably fear more than anything.

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Well, let's talk about fear a little bit Because that's what failure is really all about. That's the highway to failure is fear, right? That's where you're going. All the key is, how How do I stay loose? How do I not choke? I've been told that the unconscious doesn't know any negatives. So if you say, Don't panic, all the unconscious hears is panic. So it's like, how do you talk to that part of your brain that is starting to seize up? And I've seen everybody choke. I've seen the greatest choke. Everybody chokes. There's no doubt. Everybody chokes.

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You're not human if you don't. But what sets apart greatness is clarity under pressure, that you don't have an indecision. It might not go well, but things actually slow down for the Michael Jordans, the Wayne Gretskis, the feds, and the Rafa, and the Serenas, Usain Bolt, these people that are at this level. But things actually become clear and they slow down. For a lot of people that are really good, things speed up and you question your decision making. But when something's working, that's what you want to keep doing under pressure.

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That grounds you in the present anyway. It takes your mind off of a possible failure looming, and it's just, What am I going to do on this next point? Absolutely. Yeah. I've seen that you talk about the most important thing is short term memory loss, and that's a wonderful way to look at it. But how do we develop that?

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The craziest part is I used to remember all my results. I think I've forgotten them, or now because of the Internet, you can look things up before you had to remember everything. And so I've forgotten so many of my wins, but for some ridiculous reason, you remember losses more clear, like they happened yesterday. It's like, I don't want to remember losses. I want to remember good wins.

[00:31:22]

Right, of course.

[00:31:22]

But a gutting loss for Roddick, 2004, Wendel.

[00:31:28]

Yeah, I watched that.

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And I I was so surprised. Andy actually wasn't gutted after the match. He still wanted to go out and celebrate. I probably was an asshole and said, No, we shouldn't celebrate tonight because we didn't get to win. I'm still, to this day, probably bitter that I didn't show up that night because of, You know what? He was being the bigger person in that moment That it was a hell of a match, didn't get the result, but I'm not going to hide in my room. I'm not going to... I should have been a little bit smarter about that situation and not been bitter. I do say short term memory loss as a player, as a coach, is really important.

[00:32:22]

How about as a person?

[00:32:23]

Totally. Because you can become bitter over them and it will affect you the next match. Two weeks Six weeks later. Sometimes one match, six weeks later, can still be costing you. I feel like actually I probably ultimately learned from that match. But in that moment, I was a little bit down. I was the Debbie Downer that night. I remember my son, who is now... So 35. He was 15. He was like, Dad, we should be going to this. Then I think he and I didn't go. It was stupid of me.

[00:33:15]

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[00:34:34]

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Upgrade your wardrobe. Go to quince. Com/failbetter for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's quince. Com/failbetter to get free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince. Com/failbetter. Com/failbetter to get free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince. Com/failbetter. You talk about acting. A couple of times you mentioned acting, and I really appreciate that because, as I said, I wanted to be a pro basketball player. That wasn't going to happen. I used to watch my hands because my dad would say, Your hands aren't big enough. And I'd watch my hands and I'd swear that they were growing because if you watch something long enough, it starts to vibrate. So I'd say, They're growing, they're growing. And so that was my dream. But it was clear I wasn't going anywhere with it. And I kept searching for intensity of competition. And it was only when I started acting that I found, not so much in the win, but I also love team sports, so I like the collaboration of acting as well. But it was there that I found the high wire intensity that I'd always missed. So really acting became a substitution for me for any sporting competition.

[00:38:55]

There's a lot of parallels between an actor and a tennis player, and the focus, the determination, and the drive. I spent 2022 working on this movie called Challenges, where I was a tennis consultant, and I spent a lot of time with Zendaya. And she had has drive similar to a Coco, which maybe Zendaya prepared me to get ready for Coco. But it's just this singular focus and been doing it from a young age and that that's what your focus is. Everything that you do, you're trying to do it to improve, to get better. The willingness to put in the hours is the thing of beauty to see.

[00:39:42]

Right. Now, when you're coaching Zendaya for that movie, it must be a tough choice because there's one way to go about it, which is to try and make her the best tennis player you can make her, or you can try to make her look like the best tennis player that you can make look. How do you go about doing that?

[00:40:03]

Well, it was my first foray into doing this. In a short period of time, it wasn't like Zendaya had to go from... She had never played. So Okay, so we had a short period of time, and she's supposed to be pro-level. It's not like we were getting prepared to have a little hit and giggle that you see in a movie. My brain just instantly, How are we going to help.

[00:40:31]

How much time do you have?

[00:40:32]

We had three months in Malibu, in LA, and then we had about six weeks in Boston. Then I learned after Malibu, We were really trying to work on a lot of things. But once we got to Boston and we knew who shooting was, and we got her body double, it was more about preparing. This is where her acting kicked in, is learning the body movements and the swings of my body double so I could be in sync with her. She put in the work, and I think that helped her probably a ton, understanding that now I got to choreograph my movements and my swings towards this particular person, opposed to maybe having an idea of a bunch of different players. And that's where the acting probably helped her a lot.

[00:41:26]

Yeah. One of the acting methods that I started studying when I started acting was the Meisner technique. I don't know if you've ever heard of that. Have you heard of Meisner? I have not, but you'll enlighten me. I will enlighten you. So I think you'll like this. So the core of that acting school is what they call a repetition exercise, which is at its most basic, and they barely explain it to you. They just have you do it. But at its most basic, it's, I say, You're looking at me. I just noticed something in you. You're looking at me and you say, You're looking at me back. You just repeat exactly what I say. So it's you're looking at me, you're looking at me, you're looking at me. And it immediately can turn into a fight, it can turn into love. It can turn into tears and laughter. And you see what you learn immediately is there is no... It doesn't matter what the words are because the story is the human emotion underneath it. But what you really learn as an actor in that exercise is it's all on the other... The guy's on the other side of the net, he's throwing it back.

[00:42:33]

You throw the ball to him, he throws it back. You hit the ball to him, he hits it back. That's the entire basis of that acting technique, is very much like tennis.

[00:42:41]

Well, that's not dissimilar to the wall.

[00:42:46]

Well, you can do the repetition in the mirror. That's the version of the wall. So I can get up in the morning, and if I want to do a little exercise, I can go look in the mirror, brush my teeth, say you look like shit, and that's how it goes immediately.

[00:42:59]

All right. I get you. That's an interesting technique.

[00:43:03]

Yeah. You said that tennis players, they overestimate their weaknesses or they underestimate their weaknesses. And do you think that people are generally like that? And that's one of the ways we can get out of our own way is by being completely honest with ourselves. However, if you're too honest with yourself, you can talk yourself out of a win as well, right?

[00:43:26]

Well, I think the first what you said is I do a ton of tennis players, they think their weakness isn't a weakness. I'm a numbers guy, and I'll say, Okay, your justification of how you're playing this shot is costing you. One guy that I work with, Sam Queer, had a serve in a forehand, and I felt like if he just managed his backhand better, Just like a left jab. Didn't go for the backhand, just kept it in play, would maximize his serve in his forehand. But he really believed that the backhand was his best shot, which had me flummoxed. So fast forward, 14 years later, doing an event last year in Napa. Sam is retired. He's playing in this little exhibition with Steve Johnson. And Steve Johnson asked me about why I didn't do better with Sam. I told him the story about the backhand. And then instantly, Sam picked up like it was 13 years before. No, because my backhand is my best shot. I don't know why you said that. I'm like, Sam, I really, really, really want to tell you your backhand is your best shot, but it's not. And it's 13 years later.

[00:44:59]

I mean, as somebody who's had a lousy backhand his whole life, I go out there and I want to hit backhands all the time, and I get miserable because I think it's suddenly going to get better, but it won't.

[00:45:11]

But if you just manage it, David, put it in play, Well, we'll go ahead. So we can manage your game, and then maybe now your forehand can do more damage. Right. So that's when I think about the math of tennis, the numbers. If If you manage a weakness and you magnify the strength, then... Because a lot of times in a tennis match, you win 6-4, 6-4, it's only a five points difference. Sure. So the margins are small. So if you play the margins right, You can change things.

[00:45:46]

I keep on thinking that all these lessons are really important, obviously not just for tennis, but for all of life. And I'm trying to translate them on the fly, and I'm not doing a very good job. But I think they'll settle in. And I I think you know this because I think in your book, you say lessons from the court to the boardroom or whatever. So I think you know that you have wisdom to impart that goes beyond the tennis court. My coach, Coach Burns, he was my basketball coach in high school, and he taught me it was all right to care. That's what he taught me. He taught me it was all right to hate losing and to care about the game and to care about, to respect myself out there and to play as hard as I really felt like winning and to care about losing. That's beautiful. Not to hate losing, but to care, to cry after a loss. We cried after a loss, not all the time, but a specific one. And how beautiful is that? Here I am, a super cool, long-haired, blase high school student, crying about a stupid basketball game.

[00:46:59]

But that's a It's a beautiful thing because if we can attach to moments like that in life, I think that's the win. The win is caring.

[00:47:07]

Yeah. And to what you just said, probably still to this day, 20 years on, That I was fucking stupid and didn't go out that night with Andy. Because I cared so much. I cared. It killed me for him that he didn't get that. He never went to Lomelen. Yeah. And he lost it in 2005. He lost again in 2009. But I cared so much for... But in that moment, that's the way he needed to process it. And I should have shared that moment with him to let him process it that way.

[00:47:45]

That's amazing. I want to thank you for having this conversation with me. It's been really enlightening. And I keep on budding up against my own memories and as an athlete and listening to you remember the losses. I remember the losses, too, man, and they weren't as significant as yours. They weren't on a big stage, but they were losses.

[00:48:13]

Yeah, totally.

[00:48:15]

Yeah. All right, man. Well, I'll see you in LA.

[00:48:19]

Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.

[00:48:32]

Okay, this could be dangerous because I'm waking up the morning after talking to Brad Gilbert and just getting down my thoughts before coffee. That's the dangerous part. So what I got from him, in a way, is what I was hoping to get and more, because he takes a very practical approach to dealing with fear, fear of failure, what we call choking in sports, when we talk about that thing. We can choke in life. It just isn't as this intensified moment, this clarified moment, where we confront ourselves and our inability to rise to the moment or our fear of rising to the moment. So Brad's got this muscular approach to choking, and he keeps on coming back to tactics. Tactics, tactics, tactics, tactics, tactics, which is That's the Zen of his approach because it grounds you in the moment. All right? So you're like, Oh, my God, if I lose this game, if I lose this match, then I don't make the money, then I lose the house, then my wife and kids leave me, and then I die in the gutter. Yeah, and that's how my mind goes, and that's how I think many minds go.

[00:50:14]

And Brad would be there to focus you on the now, to keep your feet moving. I mean, literally, Brad will say, Think of your feet. Stay on your toes. Sea-ball, hit-ball. Bring it back down to just simple right action, correct action. And there's a lot to be said for that. There's more fail better with Lemonada Premium. Subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content like more of my behind the scenes thoughts on this episode. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts. Fail Better is a production of Lemonada Media in coordination with King Baby. It is produced by Keegan Zema, Aria Bracci, and Donny Matias. Our engineer is Brian Castillo. Our SVP of Weekly is Steve Nelson. Our VP of New Content is Rachel Neil. Special thanks to Carl Ackerman, Tom Krupinski, and Kate D. Lewis. The show is executive-produced by Stephanie Widdles-Wax, Jessica Cordova-Kramer, and me, David Dekovny. The music is also by me and my band, The Lovely Alan Lee, Pat McCusker, Mitch Stuart, Davis Rowland, and Sebastian Modack. Special thanks to Brad Davidson. You can find us online at Lemonada Media, and you can find me at David Ducouveny. You know what it means when I say at David Ducouveny.

[00:51:48]

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