‘Felt like Someone Had Taken a Knife and Stabbed Me’- Coco Gauff’s Coach Brad Gilbert Narrates Painstaking Moment in Coaching Andre Agassi

Between “feeling cheated” at the French Open in June and opening the floodgates in the US Open Semifinals against Boris Becker in September, Andre Agassi-Brad Gilbert duo were “winning ugly!” This was 1995, the Summer of Revenge as the duo called it, and a battered Agassi made it to the US Open finals after four title wins and a 26-match winning streak.

That morning on the finals day, Agassi woke up with a torn cartilage underneath the ribs to face Pete Sampras 9 hours later. The final loss impaired Agassi to the degree that he lost his fighting spirit… Not just for a year, but a far longer time till 1998. Not even the fact that he would get to keep his World No. 1 rank irrespective of whether he loses or wins could console the then-26-year-old. Echoes of his losing will could be heard from miles away as documented in his autobiography, Open, “I’m 26-1, and I’d give up all those wins for this one.

“All that work and anger and winning and training and hoping and sweating, and it leads to the same empty disappointed feeling. No matter how much you win, if you’re not the last one to win, you’re a loser. And in the end I always lose, because there is always Pete. As always, Pete.”

Two decades on, the 62-year-old tennis coach Gilbert, now currently a part of Coco Gauff‘s team, appeared on the Fail Better with David Duchovny podcast, where he revisited the most brutal experiences of his career. He was immediately taken back to the 1995 US Open where Pete Sampras won by defeating reigning winner Andre Agassi 6-4, 6-3, 4-6, 7-5. He stated,

“I mean, but I can give you a few of them that just jump out right away. When I was coaching Andre – 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, you know, playing Pete Sampras in the finals of the ’95 Open.

“I could tell – lost that match seven, five and a fourth. I felt like someone had taken a knife and stabbed me. Then, one other one.”