 It takes a rare gift of greatness that you get even hungrier, that you work even harder, that you do things that, like, you know what? This was great, but now I've got to go to another level. And a lot of young players, too, when they get a win like that, besides making lots of money and things, their life changes, the worst thing sometimes that can happen, you can get satisfied. But greatness doesn't get satisfied. And that's where you, as Zach says, you meet that great team around you to help guide you, to push you, to even double down, to work harder to make even changes to get better. This is Startup to Store Front, the podcast where we inspire entrepreneurship through truth. Today's guests are the father and son duo Brad and Zach Gilbert. To say that tennis is a Gilbert family hobby would be like saying that the Kennedy family dabbles in politics. Brad was a former professional tennis player who was ranked as high as number four in the world and won a bronze medal at the 88 Olympics to boot. After his playing career was over, he went into coaching, molding the next generation of elite players such as Andre Agassi, Andy Roddick, and Andy Murray. Zach grew up courtside at televised tournaments, so it's no surprise that he also took the tennis, eventually becoming an NCAA Division I tennis player for Cal Berkley. Our conversation today is centered on all things tennis, but the lessons here are universal. So listen in to recover everything from how to manage expectations and outside pressure, why Brad had such a difficult time coaching Zach, and the importance of being honest about your weaknesses. Now, back to the episode. All right, welcome to the podcast. On today's show, we're talking to Brad and Zach Gilbert. Thanks so much for joining. Welcome to West Hollywood. Welcome to our studio. Good morning. I would have never guessed that this is a studio, but it's extremely hip. Thanks for having us, Diego. Of course. Appreciate it, man. We were talking about, obviously, your career, obviously, but you're talking about your superstitions, so I want to just jump back into that around how if you had a good game, you wouldn't change anything. You would do exactly the routine. You had Andre Agassi do the same thing. Hey, if I was reborn Diego, I'd like to think that I would cure myself of superstition. But, you know, as crazy as you can make yourself believe anything, and especially when things are going well, I always just felt like rinse and repeat. Why would you want to do anything different? And opposed to like, I would be so much like, okay, from practice to eating to this chair to all these little things. I'm not amazingly neurotic, but I just felt like those little things would give me an edge. And then when you believe, you somehow can make yourself play a little better. Yeah. When did you first get into tennis? What made you get into tennis? Was it your parents? When I was three. My dad and older brother started to play. I think my dad had an apartment building. He ended up cleaning out an apartment where some tennis rackets were left, and then all of a sudden they went to play tennis. And then like, I think about a day or two later, my dad proclimated that that's it. We're playing tennis, but they weren't letting me play yet. So I had to start playing on the wall downstairs at our house until I could make 50 in a row. Then I could, you know, start playing on the court. That didn't take me very long. Wow. So Galena, right? So Galena's a tennis pro at over at Bacara, the Ritz Carlton in Bacar in Santa Barbara. She told me she grew up playing on basketball courts. And so the ball flies like the ball. Oh, it's quick, especially if it was street. I remember when she was saying that to you. She said she played on wood, right? Yeah. Which is just lightning fast. And so because of that, she's so amazed. I mean, you can imagine playing on hard court. And it's like, the ball just seems like so slow compared to this baseball. Well, Andre's dad was probably 50 years ahead of time. When Andre was a little kid, when it would rain, he would take him on a racket ball court in the late 70s, fire the ball at him. Wow. And then that's how he developed his hand speed taking the ball on the rise because the ball kind of skips and squirts, you know, and it's really quick. Yeah, maybe that's something I need to do. Might have to get you on the racket ball court, man. We need to build a basketball court at LATC so I can practice on it or a racket ball court. This is my problem. I love how self-serving this all is. This is really about me. Put it in the box, man. This is about your journey to get better. This is about my journey. So I'm four years into tennis. I don't want to take away the whole conversation, but I'm four years into tennis and I'm just like addicted. And I used to be, I used to play a lot of soccer. And in soccer, I thought it was like way too cool for school. And so what would happen is like, I would block a lot of the coaching. I would, like I was, I went to Belgium to play. And when I got there, I recognized the talent level. It was like all of a sudden all these humans were just unbelievably athletic, super elite, fast. They could play just as good with both feet. And I was not that. And so it became the time for me of like, okay, this is where you have to double down and really get better. So we hired coaches, did the whole thing. And I just wasn't advancing. I wasn't getting there. But I was like, I was approaching high school. And so I was also a kid who frankly just wanted to get laid, right? Like I'm in high school. I want to attract women. And so I had the story. It was like a cool story. And I was good. I was like, I'm good. And so to some extent I got lazy and complacent. And then I was like, I'll probably never find a sport I really like. Tennis comes along and I just get addicted to tennis. My wife plays tennis, comes from a tennis family. And I said, okay, if I'm going to play something again, I'm going to have the right mental approach. So I'm going to make sure my backhand gets just as good as my forehand or gets better than my forehand, right? And so I started like, find my weaknesses, grading myself on every little thing and then just like focusing on fixing all the weaknesses. I feel like I have the right mindset. I don't know if that's true, but that's how I feel. Like I have the right approach. I don't, I don't get bogged down by losses. It also means I don't care very much, which is a problem. It's like, I care, but I'm more interested in like the progress than the victory. I mean, that's a good outlook. It is, but it isn't because it doesn't get me any trophies. Like I'm over here losing trophies. Zach's watching me lose trophies. I think, yeah, there's a fine balance between, because if you care too much and you want to win too badly, it can hurt, it can work against you for sure. You get too tense in the big moments when you want it too bad and you're just thinking about the result too much. If you've shifted the other way, you can relax yourself too much and not quite have the right adrenaline that you need. And it's finding that balance. I always thought about, you know, at a young age, I always was very in tune to what was on the other side of the net. That's how I got a lot better in tennis. Everybody's always in tune with themselves. I always was thinking about what a player did well or what they didn't do well. And so I always like, that's my focus. And then the biggest outlier for me is as a kid, you're pretty much only in your area code. Once I started playing and you get out of your area code, you can kind of see better players and see where the game is going. It's a good thing that you see better players because now all of a sudden it motivates you. But I still think about even when I was not as good in basketball and baseball and I played every game as a kid, I was better than almost everybody else because once again, just like in tennis, I was always thinking about what kids don't do well. So I want to find that area and then maximize what I can do. That's what I was always thinking about. And then the one thing that you can control is that, you know what, if you gave 100%, you competed, you can wake up tomorrow and you know what, go back at it and feel good about it. But I also think the big part of progressing in any athletic endeavor is finding better competition. So as long as you're constantly finding better competition and rising to the occasion, that's going to be the best metric for success that you can possibly do. Like what you said, like going out of your zip code, finding other kids who are better or more agile or whatever it was, like that's a massive point I think in every athlete's journey where you might be the top dog until you're not. And then you've got to, like if you're driven enough, you will be pushed to become the next top dog until you're not. And then constantly rinse and repeat until... I think it was a D1 swimmer. Yeah. Super good. Not an Olympian. Not an Olympian, unfortunately. Way too many people are obsessed about being perfect and winning every single time. I think that's me. I think I have that. I don't know what to call that. It's a big thing that you see in a ton in tennis. And a lot of people that I've worked with, this pursuit of perfection doesn't exist. It only makes you miserable chasing it, and you're never satisfied with being good. And tennis, the easiest part about tennis is you only have to be a few points better than your opponent to win. And this whole pursuit of being perfect, you get crazy. You know, it's just about competing. When you add on like the money part of it, so as soon as you're in a match and it's like there's real money on the line, life-changing money, do you feel that? Like do you get extra tight? Do you not care? Do you take a game or a set to really fall into, okay, cool, I can deal with this now? What is that moment at? Because at the club I see people fall apart and I'm like, there's not even money here. Like I say that all the time. There's not even money on the line. But at some point, maybe for you, definitely, there was a moment where you went from probably little money to, oh my god, this could change Zach's life. That's a good question, I mean, and Zach can answer it as well. Even for playing for no money, when you have a little flip score, whether that's in high school or it's a club match, there's something psychologically about winning and losing. And that can make you a little bit uptight. That's the reason why they keep score. Otherwise it wouldn't keep score. I think probably what made me blossom as a tennis player going from around 17, 18 to 19 was seeing the players go to pieces for playing for points, playing for money, all of the things that you can, in their mind, lose. Or all of a sudden, these things that, you know, make them uptight. And I actually felt like, for me, it didn't matter if we were playing for five bucks or we were playing for 500 grand. The winning and losing is the same. It's the opponent's strength and weaknesses are still the same. So actually playing for money and playing for more money became better for my game because I didn't worry about the losing of the money. I would still be pissed about just losing the match or winning the match. So I was able to remove myself from that and a lot of players aren't. Do you think in today's world where, like, that flip score is now social media? It's now Instagram. It's now sponsorships that, you know, may go a certain way, especially if you're an up-and-coming player. Do you think that heightens it significantly? Like, if you were coaching a young player today, like Emma, who just won, right? She was 19 when I think she won the U.S. Open. So for her, it went life-changing. In the social media world, she went from, like, 20,000 followers. Now she has, like, 2 million. She was invited to the Met Gala. She probably has all these sponsorships lined up. And so her life quite literally changed in a super meaningful way. Then she enters Indian Wells and she gets bumped in the first round. And who knows why that happened. But my point is, like, do you think that that extra layer of it's not just the flip, it's not just the check, it's now... it could literally propel you to a household name. And that pressure's got to be real in the moment. I mean, they know it. Well, obviously social media was not around a million years ago. And it's changed for everybody. But you see a lot of young players when they win a major. Life changes. You are no longer that player before. And sometimes that pressure forget... even about forgetting about social media. You could be three years later and you're still only one-time major. But yet that always comes up. And so you're trying to get back and you're being measured against that. But the whole pursuit, it's just trying to get better. And not worrying about... social media isn't just one person and it keeps growing. And obviously the hardest thing I hear from players sometimes in interviews now is, like, people being, like, beyond being bullied or, you know, it's like, you lost me money or all these crazy things on it. It's almost like, don't read it, which is extremely difficult to say, but people will do it. But beyond anything on that, in tennis, the greatest thing about tennis, you potentially control the outcome. You know, it's to enter one leaf. Just focus on the outcome. Yeah. And so these people don't win you the match, lose you the match. And as simple as that. And for Emma, the whole thing now is, listen, there's a lot more tape on it. There's a lot more things that are tangible that, okay, we have to keep working on our game to keep getting better. That's the only thing is. And listen, that's all of sports. I feel better just hearing that and that's not even Emma. I do think in her situation too, which is an extremely unique situation, I think the team around her right now is going to be huge in keeping her humble, keeping her focus, and just focusing on having her control, what she can control. I mean, her situation is pretty much unprecedented in tennis. A qualifier had never won a major before. Usually at least there's some level of success on the pro tour. I think it's going to be my story too, by the way. I interviewed her after she qualified at the Open. She was so pumped. Just to make it to the main draw. Just to be in the big show. And you know what? When you turn pro in anything, it shouldn't be about, I want to go from 20,000 followers to 2 million followers. Totally. But you're 18. It should be the furthest thing from your mind. It's probably somewhere in the mind. Yeah. But obviously in tennis and sports, you grow up quicker. You know, because of expectations and pressure and all these teams and things that are around. But you just keep the focus on what you've done to get there and where you're going to keep going. And keep working on it. Keep improving your game. Do they ask you for advice? No. They don't. No. One of my favorites ever. She would charge five cents in peanuts. The girl, the psychologist. Was that a... Lucy. Lucy. Yeah. What do you think? I'm Lucy? Is that right? That's so funny. Yeah, yeah. I want to dive a little bit deeper into the mental aspect of tennis or sport in general. So you interviewed Emma when she qualified for the Open. And then, you know, she won very shortly after. Does that play a part into it being an underdog, having no expectations? How do you manage those expectations as someone who maybe comes into a tournament and no one expects anything of them? But now, you know, after winning, everyone expects everything because you're a phenom, you're a young stud, and now you have to manage outside expectations with your own and knowing what you're capable of and going forward from that. Well, sometimes managing that moment while you're in it is the easiest thing. It's afterwards that it takes a rare gift of greatness that you get even hungrier, that you work even harder, that you do things that, like, you know what, that this was great, but now I've got to go to another level. And a lot of young players, too, when they get a win like that, besides making lots of money and things their life changes, the worst thing sometimes that can happen, you can get satisfied. But greatness doesn't get satisfied. And that's where you, as Zach says, you need that great team around you to help guide you, to push you, to even double down, to work harder, to make even changes to get better. What made you want to write the book? What made me want to write Winning Ugly? Well, I'm not a writer. I can't write a book in the tennis game, by the way. Everybody cites it. No clue about writing anything. I mean, I barely, I never even had a checkbook. You're in the business of selling books, not writing books. But it was in 1991, it was late November. I was icing my ankle. It's a 30-year anniversary. Congratulations. I was icing my ankle in the San Francisco Tennis Club and the locker room was like a meat locker. I didn't even need the frickin' ice. And this guy who was a morning producer, Steve Jameson, comes over to me and he's like the classic 3-5-4-0 type player. Morning producer, a good guy. And he's like, I want to write this book with you. I've got this idea of Winning Ugly. And I was like, no, I'm not a writer. And he's like, no, I didn't think about it. Fast forward 24 hours later. Same spot. I'm icing again. Steve comes up to me again. You want to write this book with me, Winning Ugly. You know, I got something here. And I said, sure. And little did I know that one of the guys that he plays with, he had written three books, couldn't get them published. He bet him 100 bucks that he could write something with me. And get it published. And get it published. And so we banged it out at about four or five weeks just shooting the shit. And then he'd come back, show me the draft, come back. And amazingly, you know, he had never written. He was a morning producer. And we kind of realized early on that we had a pretty good flow together. And then I really opened his eyes a little bit. One day we met at the club, you know, to talk about some things. Two of the guys that he played against, he was watching them play. I was watching them play. And within 30 seconds I started telling him, you know, the guy cannot serve wide to save his life. This guy can't go down the line. He couldn't believe that I could actually analyze these two, three, five guys, their strengths and weaknesses. It goes, I've been playing these two guys for 10 years, twice a week. And I had no clue about their strengths. It's like, how is that possible? How could you play somebody? And it's amazing how many people at the club play people, play in games, have no idea about their opponent's like really good strength or what they don't do, you know. So from that book, Steve stopped being the morning producer at KTVU in San Francisco Morning Station. And he wrote like seven books with John Wooden. And I believe three or four with Bill Walsh. And then when you, when the book came out, did you think it would be as successful as it is? No, no clue. But it's amazing, it's still 30 years on. I'll still have every once in a while. Maybe one of the coolest things about seven or eight years ago, I'm coming out of the hall at Wimbledon. And a Russian player comes running by me and it's like, are you going to be here? And it's like, yeah, no problem. Comes running back. No photos, bro. Leave me alone. No, no, comes running back. Has literally at least a 15 year old winning ugly in Russian. The whole book in yellow. And it's like, can I sign it here? And then she wanted to ask me a bunch of questions. I was like, no, I gotta go back in and work. But it's amazing. I'll see players that are like, you know, and even some different sports. It's still quoted today. I mean, when I first got into tennis, which was not long ago, people, that was the first thing people said. He's like, oh, if you're going to play tennis, you have to, you have to read this book. And I think someone sent it to me for free. And I ended up buying it. And I just like had, I was like, I read the book, you know? And I was like, oh, it's really interesting. And then, but you hear it quoted a lot, like at the club. There's so many practical tips in the book. Just like, I think that's one of the beauties of the book is there's just so many things that you can just take directly right from, you know, right from there. I mean, even in terms of your preparation, like being super like well stocked with your bag. So, you know, you don't have that moment of stress, like, you know, while the match is going on, because you're unprepared in the first place. Changing your shirt. Yeah. All these little things. You can see in the notes after the match on your opponent. So you can, you know, remember what to do better for the next time, you know, things that, you know, we just take for granted that we don't really put into practice. 30 anniversary. Will there be a sequel? I call myself like a Chevy truck. I drive a Chevy truck. You're built to last? Yeah. Andre, like he was a complicated genius. So the one thing about winning ugly and how I played and how it's so few people in sports are tuned in about their opponents. You know, I tell so many kids now, win or lose, especially when you lose. Don't, you hear this so often, I play like fucking crap or he got luckier. He played great. What actually happened? Be honest, write it down. Now you don't even have to write it down. You could just write it on your notes on the cell phone. And when something went well, make notes. So when you play somebody again, you can refresh yourself. It's amazing that people, I don't have the resources to do this or what this person is doing. You know what? Use the resources of yourself. I'm going to invite you to my next tennis match. I'm going to tell you one guy I worked with about seven years ago. This is a cool kind of thinking tennis guy was a CEO, big company probably had, I don't know, five to 10,000 employees, early 60s. But when he would play tennis in his three, five matches, he'd get tight as shit. And he didn't know why. So I've been working with him a few times and I go to one of his matches. I hide in the car. He didn't want me to be seen. And then also when I watched him play, he was not the guy that I was with on the court. And you know what? He's used to being a boss, used to being the CEO, telling everybody, now when you're playing in a match, you don't control what your opponents can do. You don't control what your partner can do. There's something to gain, something to lose. And I told him to like be sensible before that match, like with your serve. Be sensible. And afterwards when I talked to him about it, he goes, I was feeling good. Then he tried to go too big on his serve. He's going two first serves. And the next thing you know, he's given away three points a game on his serve. And then he was trying to like make up for it on returns. And it's like these things can happen, even to like, to pros, to your level, everybody's level. What do you mean your level? What do you mean your level? The problem? Well, Bob told me you're like a 4-0. What are you insinuating? No, but sometimes like you can feel good, you can overdo things. Sometimes you can underdo things. But tennis is about finding a way, finding a way to maximize what you do really well and conversely minimize what you don't do well. And a lot of tennis players, pros, especially cup players are not honest in what they don't do well. That's probably the number one thing from tennis players and athletes. They are not honest in what they don't do well. I can tell you, I wish God gave me a better serve and gave me a bunch of things better, but I'm really honest with what I didn't do well. And so I wouldn't, you know, try to like bluff that situation. Yeah. Do you think tennis has changed that much? Sometimes I'll hear the commentators and they make a big stink about like the new strings and all this stuff and how the game's so much faster. Has it changed that much from what you were playing? Yeah, I mean the athleticism, the movement, the strings and a lot of things. But you know what hasn't changed? The court dimension is still the same. There's still the same scoring system. There's still something to win, something to lose. But it's just played at a faster pace. But I still see, I sit and watched a million matches. You know, courtside, commentated a million matches. Coaches, you see great players blow it, you know, or have something bother them that day. So there's still the same intricacies, simplicities of it, but we're just playing. And the biggest change massively. And Zach could tell you this. The 500 player in the world now is a million times better than the 500 player 20 years ago. There's just no doubt. And you're seeing because of the strings and because of probably the athleticism, 12-year-old kids are getting better at a much sooner age. So when they're coming to 18 and 20, they're getting way better. So like I said, there's a million more. But mentally, we're still seeing, you know, can get the best of you. Nothing's changed in that department. That's fascinating. I'd like to ask about your progression as a coach. So like for my own athletic career, I went into coaching right after college because I wasn't good enough to become a professional swimmer. But I still had a lot of love and interest in the sport. So I took that path and I stopped swimming after my senior year championship meet. And I went right into coaching. And what I found was that the kids that I coached, I ended up coaching an Olympian. And coaching him made me a better coach because I learned things from him. Just seeing him swim day in, day out that I didn't necessarily know as an athlete. And when you went from competing to coaching Andre Agassi, did you learn anything from coaching him that maybe you didn't know before? And what kind of relationship did you have in that initial like first few years of coaching? Sometimes your wife's biggest fear is you become your dad through osmosis. I'd like to think of I learned a shitload from my coach, Tom Shivington. Maybe the only difference between me and coach is, shit, I got a chance to coach some better players. But the thing that I learned right away, when you think as a player, when you're coaching, you think about what you would do. Instantly, when I, the words come out of your mouth, if I start talking about what I would do, it doesn't apply to Andre's game. So I think instantly I realized that when you're looking through somebody else's eyes and lenses, you're looking through what their strengths, their weaknesses are. You must remove yourself as the player. You have experiences, but that doesn't make any difference in looking through somebody else's lenses and to helping them. You know, I would say I was not as good of a coach working with Zach. You know, because we had our struggles. Yeah. But Zach is a really good coach. It's the same. Maybe he learned that from me as well. But I definitely learned that from my coach. The most important thing is looking through your player that you're coaching and figuring out what's best for them, not what's best for you. And a lot of great players and a lot of players from different sports. And you hear this in football a lot. One of my worst pet peeves, it's my way or the highway. So if I'm coaching the next player, you don't compare them to Andre or make them like Andre, don't make them like Zach, everybody's different. But you got to figure out what's best for them, what are their strengths and individualities, but 100% it's through their lenses. Yeah. You saying that you had your differences when you were coaching Zach, I was also coached by my dad in baseball growing up and I always had the hardest time listening to him because you see him as this fatherly figure and then you don't want him bossing you around on the field or whatever. Zach, what were your thoughts on growing up and getting coached by your dad? It was really difficult as a teenager, especially once I got to maybe 13, 14, for all the advice, not to feel like personal criticism. And as much as I know that he's a savant when it comes to the sport, he just knows everything that you can know about coaching tennis, it's just too hard to... At the time, it was too hard for me to separate the dynamic of you just don't want this advice from your dad at that time. It just feels all too personal and too frustrating in a way. But then you have a coach that's not your parent and all of a sudden it just feels like advice again and the separation was just easier at that time. I wish I could go back and have more perspective as a 13, 14-year-old, but it just wasn't there at that moment. Did you feel pressure? Oh, it's Brad's son. Was there a pressure or not really? There was a little bit. I wasn't really able to pinpoint it at the time, but in hindsight, I think there was, when we would go to junior tournaments, USTA, which is sort of the national tennis body where they have junior tournaments, is already kind of a pressure cooker to begin with. For kids, this individual sport aspect with a lot of attention on them to win is a lot to begin with. And then I think on top of that, it was amplified that kids that I would play really wanted to beat me. It was a big thing for them if they see him watching. So it created some unhealthy, I think, moments in terms of pressure for kids that are that young, myself included. If I could go back and change on the coach... You know, like with Andre, we could talk for three hours, you know, afterwards. And Andre had a photographic memory. If you picked a point at 4-3, he could recite the 27-ball rally like he's a play-by-play guy. And sometimes we could just talk for hours on in, fast-forward to coach and Roddick. And Roddick was like Mission Impossible. This message will implode in 10 seconds. And it's like after 30 seconds, he just... And with Zach, I probably should have learned how to be able to get in and get out much more. And I probably didn't realize, fucking stupid of me, because I'm always thinking about how to figure something out. And my dad was somewhat my coach, but he didn't really know anything about tennis other than he would always say, you know, win that last point. Don't miss. There was no pressure. The pressure was for me. And the pressure was for my opponent. I mean, man, if I lost, though, when I was a kid, I'd have to listen in the back of the car, driving back from Fresno. You don't know what it's like in 74 to be listening to three and a half hours of Republican politics. And then maybe if you win, you could listen to sports talk radio. There was no... I once asked my dad that, do you ever listen to music? And he said, what for? There was no music. So I wish that I had a little better understanding of it that Zach wasn't quite wired like I was. And looking back on it, poor coaching by me. Interesting. Have you seen the Marty Fish documentary? I have. Okay. So one thing that Roddick's in there, and they mentioned how he ascended, I guess, you know, into meeting the doll and Federer and Djokovic, all at their, you know, basically they would become the best three players, arguably of all time, while he was on his way up. In the documentary, I was surprised where he almost doesn't accept that he could have gotten there. And he almost makes it sound like, yeah, I was around when the top three players of all time were around. So clearly no one's going to care about me. That's how he sounded in the documentary. And I don't know what's right or wrong about that, but to me it was like, that's an interesting statement. And he's not wrong, right? Obviously. I'll give you a two. First, doesn't Charles Barkley blame his mom for having him five years, you know, too late? Yeah, too late. He should have been, you know, he shouldn't have ran at the same time as George. Right, right. Andy is very self-deprecating. Okay. So sometimes it's easy to be self-deprecating to rationalize. He was right there. It's not like, okay, he was 20 or 30 in the world. He, for seven, eight years, he was right there at the cusp. And, you know, just didn't quite get over the hurdle. He had a great career, but sometimes that's a way. Everybody has a mechanism on how you deal with things. Yeah, I like losing because it fills my gas tank. So I just like, I'll make it to the mountaintop and then I'm like, I'm going to lose now because there's nothing more of a motivator for me than losing. And it's this thing I've noticed and I'm like, I'm going to change that. I don't like it. I'm not like that in business, which is fascinating. Part of you like intentionally wants to lose? Yeah, part of it because I know what happens. Like there's nothing, if I win, it's like I have expected that. Like in business as an example, when I do real estate development, this building, you walk in, it looks cool. People like it. They, you know, will make some money off of it. That was supposed to happen. This was engineered. This was manufactured. There's no, there's no hiccups here. The hiccups happen on the process. Right. So how do you manage the, the inspector doesn't like you. You have some delays. That's easy. You don't lose in business. In tennis, it's almost like you don't have that. Like the process, I'm addicted to process and I know what to fix. But in the moment, it's like losing has a, for me anyway, in tennis specifically, has a just amazing way of highlighting what I need to work on. Like I'm instantly like, oh, this, this, this, instant. I need to work on this, swinging Bali, all this stuff. And then I go to like, okay. So losing helps me. It's like the notes come when I lose versus when I win. Okay. I'm, I'll take the opposite. Switch it up. And then Zach will have a good perspective is on. Okay. Losing. Let's go dad. In tennis and sports has an effect on a lot of people in a negative way. Yeah. My coach told me Tom Shimmington when I was 19, I took my first trip to Asia. He'd say it's 32 draw. There's 31 losers every week. A lot of these kids that are going to events where they didn't lose much. You turn pro, you lose every week. Don't hang out with people that just make excuses about losing. And losing can make you lose more. But you know what? It's okay. It happens. There's 31 losers every week. But so often in tennis, you go from a lot of times these top juniors. They go to college and they've never, they've lost very little. They start losing. They fall off. They can't handle it. Next level, you have some of these guys that go from the juniors to college. They've had great careers. They start playing pros. Next thing you know, they're losing every single week and they can't handle it. So losing does build character, but you want to learn from that character because I want to win some too. But I do think it, that's the one thing about tennis at all levels, even at the 4-0 level. How am I going to get a little bit better? And it's like you're playing because you want to win a little bit. I think that's where, that's where the grit comes into play. It's all about, you know, how you look at it. Because yeah, there's going to be losses. And yeah, it's just how you see it in terms of dragging you down or something to build upon. I was probably in that boat of one of those players that was a pretty good junior and the level up. I was too hard on myself. I wanted it too badly and the losses hurt and they lingered. I wasn't able to, he has good short-term memory loss. I don't have great short-term memory loss. And it lingered too much on me, I think. So if that's something I could go back in time, I would say, you know, within a match, let bad points go. Within a span of six months, let close losses go. But something, I've learned I think the hard way. I don't know why at 60, when somebody asked me about matches, I seem like I remember losses though now. I forget matches from 35 years ago, but at least on the ATP website, you can always tell. But I seem to remember losses a little more. But I still think though, more than anything, it's just about competing. And I call it, especially as a coach, short-term memory loss. When players lose, what are we going to do tomorrow? It's so important about practice, all of our things that we, we go back at it. We don't just let it fucking go. And then, you know, at three, four days later, you're still down about this loss. You're not moving forward. You're not practicing. You're not doing the things to move forward. That's what happens when you level up and these losses come. Three or four losses become 10. Because you're being eaten alive by these losses, but that's the wrong approach. I've always heard it's, you have to allow yourself five seconds to acknowledge, like, you know, if it's a bad point you give up or it's a match you lose, you give yourself five seconds to kind of just sit in that misery. And then you've got to let it go because you've got to move on. If it is within the match still, you've got to move on. You've still recognized that there's still a big chunk to play. I learned this from hockey goalies, you know, when they let in a goal, it's very, it's very in their face, you know, like the red lights sounding right behind them, the puck is in the net behind them, but they've still got to keep going. And so you see it, like some goalies like Braden Holpe, used to play for the Capitals, he would throw some water up in the air from his water bottle and just like focus on the droplets falling and that would allow him... Like a reset. Exactly. It would allow him to focus back in and give up whatever just happened. I'm going to do that in between tennis points. Yeah. I might do it too. I saw Shiv do it one time, he had like a $1 bill and let it go. It's like, oh, you know what? I say that it's so important. Well, first of all, five seconds. I thought that was the Twitter rule. Five seconds before you send her an email. It can be applied to so many things. Yeah. But another one is like, when you lose a set, six-one, Shiv used to tell me, this is so, I told him this a lot. Don't go lose the second set the same way you lost the first set. You know, so many players are not flexible or they're not believing what just happened to make a change. For me, I don't even barely wait. Forget it. I'm not waiting a set. If I'm down three-zero, I'm already out the window on plan A. You know, I'm already thinking about what am I going to do? What am I going to change? And then that's just how you got to be. And you can't get caught up. And then when the result is over, if it didn't go well, okay, what are we going to work on? What are we going to move forward? Because I think having the positive attitude is I'm neurotic about that. It's like that's the only thing that you can control because so many players, man, everybody wants to go negative. If the coach goes negative, the player goes negative, we're toast. Coming out of COVID, it seems like tennis is like 22% on the rise, like one of the fastest growing sports. Pickleball is number two. Diego's favorite sport. Could you write, winning ugly for pickleball? I mean, I'm just giving you ideas here. These are good marketing ideas for you, Brad. It's a yes. You should say yes. I don't know a lot about pickleball. You don't need to. I think the mentality can be applied to analyze your opponent. The paddle tennis like in Venice, basically it's about maximizing what you're doing. And so many of us, when we do compete, we minimize. So sure, why not? I have to sit there and study the nuances of the game. But I feel like, you know, you can play in your game of tennis. You know, has a lot of fans from different sports that use that. Do you have a favorite match of all time? Any match that I want. I mean, it's hard to say, you know, like I said, as I've gotten older, you forget. Maybe even as a player or coach, like just like you're, or even watching Zach, maybe Zach won something. French Open final has to be a pretty good one as a coach with you and Andre. I mean, my probably my favorite coaching moment, yeah, is Andre winning the French or Andre winning the 96 Olympics, those two. I wasn't like obsessed with thinking I was ever going to win a slam or be number one in the world. It was more about just grinding out and trying to win. But I was never satisfied that like, I wish I could have done better. I wish I could have, I'm probably self defecating about my serve. I wish my serve should have been better, but maybe I should have worked on it a little more. But I'm not sure that I got like one match. I mean, right up there for me. You haven't watched me yet, so there's time for you. Just an obscure one. 1989, San Francisco, a tournament that wasn't a huge tournament on the ATP tour, but I was a ball boy when I was like eight or nine. Maybe when I was 12, 11 or 12, not only was I a ball boy, but I was a linesman. I would do the nets. My brother was 14. He was call and serve. And was the first qualifying that I ever played for an ATP event like maybe when I was 18. So winning that after losing in the finals a couple of times, two of it, winning that in 89 was pretty cool for me winning my hometown event. Yeah. Do you have a match, one of your favorites? You know, yeah, I started off more as a singles player and, you know, actually when I got to college, I barely even knew how to hit a volley. So playing doubles was a challenge at that point. But as I sort of, my college career progressed, I got better and better playing doubles and I started playing a lot with one of my best friends we actually grew up together in Marin County. We're both lefties, kind of a funny dynamic on that side. But like my senior year, we were playing really well. We barely lost a match. And just, there was a couple within that run that I really enjoyed, but we won the invitational side of the Pac-12s for doubles. And it did feel really good. It was a heated match. I ended my college career hitting back-to-back winners in that tournament, a forehand winner in an overhead. And it was just, but like the element of like playing the doubles and like just getting to like share that with somebody else and just the, he's like this, I'm like a little bit more even keeled, but he's this like super like fiery energy guy and just like we get like the kind of guy that like gives you a high five like between points and it's like, okay like that hurt a little bit. Like maybe let's tone it back, but like getting to do that together was a really fun thing. We have some questions from the LATC members. These are fun. Okay. And we can wrap on this. I always tell Zach, he should run for office by the way. Yeah. And by the way, any win is a good win. That's true. Any win is a good win. Any loss can hurt. Are there groupies in tennis? Are there groupies in tennis? Yeah. There was- You can say no comment, Brad. I have sons here. I'm sure there was lots of groupies back in the day. I don't know. I mean, life is completely different. That sounds like a political answer. Speaking of running for politics. Who do you love out of the upcoming generation of the tennis players, like all the new generation? Who's a standout to you? I mean, I like a lot of them. And it's exciting. My whole thing is when I see a lot of these young players, I think about, it's almost like a stock. It's like, what are they going to be in three and five years? And who is that person that's going to take the step forward and become a great player? Who's going to make that- Right. They're all there. They're all like bubbling. Who's going to make that big leap? Because, you know, we've seen on the women's side, quite a few win one slam. Yeah. And then not make that next leap. So I- My money's on Layla. I love Layla Hernandez. I didn't mind that she lost the U.S. Open. I just think she has it. Could keep her hungrier. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's going to feed her. Yeah. I mean- And her family, her support system is like amazing. Before the tournament that she was making a final, I would have- What? But that's the greatness about sports and tennis. What current player would you like to coach? What current- Diego Taras Palma. Thank you, everyone. No question answered. I mean, it would have been ridiculous how fun would have been to coach somebody like a Rafa or a coach somebody like Joker. Yeah. Because, you know, sometimes the key is to have somebody make you look good. I mean, anybody like that would be incredible. But anybody that I coach, you hope that you can help them become a better player. I would like to coach somebody probably 25 and under and just help them. You know, the whole thing is when you're coaching, just help somebody fulfill their dreams, you know, their journey. And that's the big thing. But somebody young and somebody that it's got a lot upside- Yeah, yeah. can make you look good as well. This one's funny. Connors or McEnroe. What do you take? And what? Like, do you have a favorite? I would imagine, yeah, it's like, which guy do you want to hang out with more? I don't know. I mean, which game? I mean, two guys, two lefties, two fiery lefties that were like, not exactly like probably the best of friends by any means. And it was like, you know, pretty good tension watching them play. I mean, and both, you know, uniquely different styles of playing. No choice. No. And then the last one, when are you coming to LATC? That's the last question. When are you going to come to the club? We did. We did get a hit in on the play early morning. I got him there. Today? No, no, no. This was a couple of months ago, but we got to get him back for a proper session. But the club was a little bit tricky about non-members not coming in. But the craziest thing is... Wait, you don't get a pass because you're like... No. Oh, this was more, that was before we just had some more girls going. The craziest thing is I had no fucking idea that I played an ATP tournament at the LA Tennis Club in 1983. And then I had this little deja vu, about a mile away. There was, remember, some little fast food, like a little chicken stand, like a burger stand. And I said, ah, I remember sitting outside like before my match like eating a chicken sandwich. So it's like... But I had no recollection of the club. I think I'd be Trey Walkie first round because I looked back on the ATP and I lost to Raul Ramirez. And I have no recollection, which is so weird that I played and lost that match. But I remember what I ate, a chicken sandwich. Like, that was it. And so, like, when we came back in the club, like, I, you know, normally, like, things are coming back. I had no memory. It's, like, pitiful because maybe I wanted to erase that match. I was going to say, it might not be your best performance. Yeah. I can't believe I... We're locked in, one of the two. Yeah, I can't believe I lost that match. I mean, when I even saw the result, I was like, I can't believe I lost it because that guy was, he was, like, aging at the time and I was like, that lost. That's one of those losses that hurts. Yeah, but... I like to think, okay, that's a good thing, one of those losses that hurt. But usually matches that hurt, you freaking remember. Every point. I don't remember any point. I don't even remember, like, anything about the match. That's pitiful. Is that why it hurts so much? You're like, why can't I even remember, like, what I did wrong? I'm smelling a rematch here. I don't know. 1983, bring it back. Let's run it back. You would roll, get him back out here. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'm still disheveled by that that I could forget. Listen, I've gone to a couple of places where I've come back. Wow, I haven't been back here in a million years. Puerto Rico. I went about three years ago. I hadn't been back there since 81. And at least I had some semblance of, like, oh, there's that stadium, at least, you know, where I got my first stadium. Until I rocked up, it's like, I would have went right by it and even realized it. But maybe... We got to get you more reacquainted. Yeah, I like the clay courts there. And you know what you need to do? You do. Yeah, you need to embrace clay. You need to what? Embrace clay. Embrace clay. Yeah. Start practicing on the clay. The LATC could be honest. And stop fixating about, you know, you're OK with losing. Yeah. I'm not OK with it. It's just... So the problem with startup is, like, you're supposed to take out. So if you're raising capital, or if you're, like, developing product-market fit, you're going to fail 14 times before you hit the thing. And so what ends up happening is you have to switch your mindset and startup where you go, OK, I'm going to collect nose. I'm going to collect rejection. I'm going to collect mistakes, because I know each one gets me closer to the win, to the solution. The problem with that mindset does not apply in tennis, is what I'm learning. Like, I need... It's a different mindset. I need to not treat them the same, but rather have... Pyramidic success. John Wooden's Pyramidic Success. Yes and no. I think they're different. They're a little different. Here's the one little tip for tennis help. OK. You try to get a little bit better at something. Yeah. Just, you know, not ten components. You know what? One. I can get my second serve a little bit better. Yeah. I can get a little more consistent on my ret... Oh my God. What? He told you that whole thing. He gave you the breakdown. No. No, it's just... Because, believe it or not, the two shots at 4-0 players, 3-5 players... So what? Serves and returns. You know, because those usually decide... The points a lot of times... I like my serve. I like my serve. My first serve is solid. Second serve, you're right. Totally right. It needs a lot of work. Yeah. I was thinking too, like comparison though, anytime you start jumping up a level in tennis, let's say you move from 4-0s to 4-5s, it's not that... Like, you know, start-up world where you got to take a good amount of nose, AK, glosses, and you have to understand that going into it. So in that sense, I think it's still some level of comparison. That's true. Yeah. But then you start getting better, start winning more. Then you got to switch the mindset. Yeah. I want to ask you guys one more thing before we leave. At a high level, so tennis is one of those sports that during the pandemic skyrocketed. We talked about it earlier, like 22% growth over the last year. And it's massive. It's booming all across the country. How can tennis sustain this kind of growth and foster the next generation of players who maybe just discovered the game during this past year? It's a great question. And hopefully we will be able to keep those players. It's something that, you know, any time that I talk about tennis, listen, it has so many great things that it can teach you about life. And you can play forever. I'm going to throw a couple of extremes on it. And I really hope over the next five to 10 years that tennis, believe it or not, at tennis clubs everywhere, embraces pickleball, that we can integrate them together. So we can literally grow both at the same time because tennis players and a lot of aging tennis players are so against pickleball. And listen, believe it or not. Seeing that, yeah. You know what else I would like to see? And a lot of older people will punch me in the head. I actually want to see tennis as we get older play in a bit of a smaller court. So we don't lose some of these players. That we do everything we can to keep more players. We can keep it. So I'm thinking of, I have the optimism. That's what I'm one of my strengths. It's like, how can we keep them? Well, let's grow together in sorts. I think you have to release winning ugly too. And then I think winning ugly for pickleball, I think you have to do that. These are two very good over the edge. Get this free advice. You should take it. I am hopeful as far as this up to continuing. Just because I think one of the biggest barriers in tennis is that first handful of times that people go out and play. It's something that you do have to stick with a while to get the hang of. And I think we lose so many players that take a few lessons. Don't feel like they're going to progress. And they kind of give it up for maybe a few other sports that are just a bit easier to just jump into and feel kind of somewhat competitive at right away. But I think what sort of COVID did do is it gave people a lot more time to spend that six months, spend that year playing and at least get in the swing of it. Now they feel like, okay, I can keep a rally. I can play some points. And I think once you get to that stage playing tennis, that's when it really opens up the door to being a really fun thing. And I don't think that those people that, you know, once you get in the hang of playing are going to stop playing because it's such a good lifetime sport. So I'm hopeful. He brought up a great point. Tennis takes patience when you start out. And within three months, it's hard to be playing and doing all these things. You know, it takes time. And with pickleball, with paddle, some of these other sports, you can play one or two times. And the next thing you know you can be playing in a game. Which is not a bad thing. It's a good thing. And you don't have to be one or the other. So I play tennis, I play pickle. Plan both. Great. But the one thing about, you know, tennis when you're beginning and continuing on and all these new people, it's like, you know what? Have a three-year plan, a six-year plan, a 10-year plan. It's OK. But you're not going to become really good in five minutes. It takes time. Great advice. I got time. You got a 10-year plan. Well, look, thank you guys for joining the podcast. Pleasure. Appreciate it. Thanks, guys.