“The importance of winning when you play badly”. Lately it has been Novak Djokovic – the number 1 tennis player in the world and winner of 24 Slams – who has repeatedly underlined the importance of winning the matches where you are less brilliant, where big plays fail and you just need to be practical and concrete. Djokovic is a master at this: capable of overturning matches in which he was unable to make an impact for much of the time and where at a certain point he finds the strength to emerge and wear out his opponent. Nole is number 1 for mental toughness, for reading matches and for the ability to turn the most difficult situations to his advantage.
Also thanks to this philosophy, Djokovic managed to enter the fight between Federer and Nadal, later surpassing both in terms of victories. He didn’t have Roger’s aesthetics and Rafa’s explosiveness, but more than anyone else he knew (and still knows) “winning dirty”, that is make the best of your possibilities while identifying the weaknesses of others. This will be needed for Djoker to win again in the highlight of the upcoming season: from Rome to the US Open, passing through Roland Garros, Wimbledon and the Olympics.
A concept, that of ‘winning dirty’, highlighted by Brad Gilbert, the author of the book “Winning Ugly”, whose first edition was published way back in 1993. A text that tries to create a gap between the excellent player and the great champion, given that Gilbert was – after the end of his career – a magician as a coach and brought a series of stars to the highest level. Above all André Agassi.
In 1994, Agassi was experiencing the greatest results crisis of his career and was not even in the top 30 in the world: it was the meeting with Gilbert that acted as a blessing. “You always look for perfection, that’s why your game isn’t good,” the person who would become his coach immediately told him 10 minutes after the first meeting. “You have to play with your head and prove that you are stronger than the opponent on the other side of the net, not all the players in the world. You don’t need perfect shots, but you need effective shots.”
A mantra that derives from his experience, put into a book that was intended primarily for amateurs, has been misunderstood by many (it has nothing to do, for example, with trying to steal a few points here and there). A text, which has become a best seller all over the world, which simply tells us that to be a long-lived champion you have to reduce mistakes to a minimum, you need extraordinary psychological strength and you have to survive the days when everything you thought of doesn’t succeed. Agassi immediately understood the importance of this way of seeing things and with Gilbert at his side he won 6 of his 8 Slams. Not a coach, but a divine apparition.
