Brad Gilbert spends the night after our interview tossing and turning. It’s madness. The guy needs help. He is lying in bed with possibly the prettiest woman in California, and the only thought in his mind is a journalist. He throws back the sheets at 2am and scribbles some notes on a pad. He returns to bed, but his mind is in turmoil. First thing next morning, he makes a call.

“Hey, buddy, did I wake you?” “No, Brad, still struggling with jet lag,” I reply.

“Oh, okay, listen, I’ve been thinking about a couple of questions you asked.”

“Yeah?” “You quoted me something that Pat Cash said?”

“Yes,” I reply. “A column he wrote after your split with Andy Murray.”

“No, it was another quote.” “Yes, about the nature of top-flight coaching . . . I’m working on the transcript now. Would you like me to read it out?”

“That would be great, buddy.” “Okay, I’ve found it. This is what he wrote: So what exactly is the role of a top-flight coach? Motivator, shot mechanic, tactical guru, friend, confidant, disciplinarian, occasional surrogate big brother, highly paid skivvy, verbal punchbag? I’d love to be asking that question of Andy Murray and Andy Roddick. Better still, perhaps I should ask Brad Gilbert and Jimmy Connors, their respective new coaches.”

“And what did I say?” he asks. “You asked me to explain what a skivvy was, then you said, ‘Well, if you’re a highly paid skivvy, you are not a coach’.”

“Yes, that’s it. A coach should wear different hats; some days you’re a friend, some days a tactician, some days a strategist, but the important thing is that you should have a predetermined thought of what you need to be.”

“Do you want me to put that in?” I ask. “Yeah.” “No problem.” “There was another question about Andre [Agassi].”

“Yeah, but I haven’t transcribed that yet. Will I call you later this afternoon?”

“Yeah, thanks, buddy.”

TAKE a flight to San Francisco on a wet Tuesday morning. Take Highway 101 to the Golden Gate Bridge and cross the bay to San Rafael. Take the road out of town towards the San Pedro mountain reserve and choose the finest property you can see. Press the buzzer on the gate and marvel at the views. Prepare to drink buckets of coffee and be royally entertained.

Brad Gilbert comes bounding down the steps like a grizzly and grabs your hand. They say he hit the ball like a caveman. They say he talks more than CNN. They say he rarely shaves and dresses like Darth Vader. They say he projects and trades in “ugly”. But within seconds of making his acquaintance, you begin to wonder.

Take his wife, Kim. They met in 1984 at the Hard Rock Cafe in San Francisco, where she was attending art college, and after three kids and 24 years, they are still going strong. Take his beautiful home, a sprawling mansion on four acres nestled in the hills that looks and feels like a hunting lodge. Take the delightful courtesy of his youngest child, Zoe, 10: “My name is Zoe. I’m pleased to meet you.”

Could it be that Gilbert is not what it says on the tin?

He has poured the first mug of coffee and we’re talking about my favourite story from his brilliant book, Winning Ugly. The year is 1986 and he is playing John McEnroe on a chilly night in Los Angeles. He loses the first set 6-1, wins the second 6-3 and it’s three games apiece as they head down the stretch.

McEnroe is struggling to hold serve. At 15-30, he is wrong-footed by a brilliant Gilbert backhand down the line. The ball is clearly good. This is how Gilbert describes what happens next: “When McEnroe hears the call, he erupts. He falls over on his back like he’s been shot. Right away he jumps up screaming. He’s acting like it’s the worst call since they invented tennis, even though I would stake my life that he knew the ball was good.”

McEnroe rants and raves at the linesman and umpire and demands an overrule. The game is delayed for 10 minutes before his claim is eventually dismissed. When play resumes, Gilbert is suddenly feeling cold, but Mac has worked himself into a frenzy and hits an ace, a serve-volley winner and two more aces to hold his serve. Suddenly the match is slipping away from Gilbert.

At 15-30 in the next game, he collects his thoughts and takes a towel from the ball-boy to wipe his hands. The umpire slaps him with a time-delay warning.

Gilbert’s head comes off, and before he knows it, he has lost. The best is yet to come. He’s in the locker room after the game. Mac walks over with a sheepish grin on his face. Gilbert can sense an apology. He’s wrong. “Hey, Brad,” McEnroe says, “you’ve gotta be more careful about delaying the game like that. In this weather I could have caught a cold.”

Gilbert smiles and shakes his head: “John does have a sense of humour.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t grab him by the throat and wanted to kill him,” I suggest.

“Well, there was a part of me that wanted to,” he says, smiling, “but if you do something like that in tennis, they kick you out. It’s not like basketball or football, where you get suspended for three or four games. If they didn’t kick you out, John might have got hit a few times.”

“You beat him in a Masters at Madison Square Garden when he gave that famous quote, ‘When I start losing to players like him, I’ve got to reconsider what I’m doing even playing this game’. It was a cruel thing to say,” I tell him.

“But that’s how he is,” Gilbert says. “But do you know what’s funny? The next minute he could come by and say hello. John’s not a bad person, but when he played, he was volatile . . . I mean, I’m competitive, but he’s crazy competitive, and intelligent too. Most people dismiss him as a brash New Yorker but he’s very intelligent.”

“Has he ever given you respect as a coach or for your book?”

“In his own way, he probably thinks I’ve exceeded what my potential was, tennis-wise, coaching-wise, writing-wise, but to be honest, I don’t know him that well. We’ve never hung out.”

“Why not?” “When we played we didn’t hang out a lot, but I don’t dislike him. Once, with Andre, we had a few beers and a decent discussion, but if you disagree with Mac on something - sport or politics - prepare for a battle. He is very opinionated. But maybe I am too . . . But hey, listen, I have nothing against him. I was perturbed about a few of those matches, but you’ve got to let go and move on.”

“You squeezed the most out of your ability as a player, but the public don’t always appreciate that. What is it about human nature?” I ask. “Why do we gravitate towards the George Bests of this world who have it all but throw it away?”

“Well, England certainly likes a train wreck,” he replies.

“You think so?” “No question. When I first came over in the early Eighties, there was the allrounder, Ian Bot-tam [Botham] - they loved that guy. If you’re just plain and simple, they’re not interested. They want Page Three stories; people who live their life to the fullest. They like train wrecks.”

“And Brad Gilbert wasn’t Page Three,” I observe. “No,” he says, laughing. “Somebody said that I played ugly, but I never thought I played ugly other than I competed my ass off. I’m at peace with myself that I tried my best, but I always felt I was better than people gave me credit for.”

“And you were,” I concur. “It’s a bit like Tim Henman,” he says. “Do you know what one of the best things about my stint with Andy Murray was? Getting to know Tim. I never knew him. I remember Andre would practise with him occasionally, and I coached against him when I worked with Roddick, but in the last year I got to go out with him a bunch of times, and man, this is one cool cat.”

“That’s not a side the public has seen.” “No it’s not,” he agrees. “He has a great sense of humour – a bit like Andre – spinning things, telling jokes, telling riddles and just this great ability to engage your brain. I believe he could have won Wimbledon, but he came along when there was some serious greatness in the game. He crisscrossed with Sampras and Federer – probably the two best grass-court players ever – but I like the way he went about himself and about the business of trying. He did everything he could, and I respect that more than anything.”

“What about the quest to find the next Henman and your work with the Lawn Tennis Association [LTA]?” I ask. “You’re aware of what happened in Australia and the British junior [Marcus Willis] who was sent home?”

“Well, I’ve actually just written an e-mail to Paul [Hutchins, the LTA head of men’s tennis] because they sent me a letter about it. Hopefully it will be a wake-up call to the kid and he’ll take advantage of a second chance. And if he doesn’t take advantage, then he will have to do something else. You might find he’s the most talented kid ever, but he will have to love it to get to the highest level. If he’s being pushed, or feels like you owe him a favour, he’s doing it for the wrong reasons.”

“So is there a chance this English kid is doing it for the wrong reasons?”

“Well, if I’m not mistaken, at the French or Wimbledon last year, the best Australian hope was sent home for some disciplinary thing, and now he’s playing well again, so maybe he learnt from that mistake. The one thing about tennis that is different from other sports is that it costs money. In tennis, if you want to go to Nick Bollettieri’s [the acclaimed tennis academy in Florida] and don’t get a scholarship, it will cost you £8,000 a month. When somebody else is paying those bills, you’ve got to play by their rules.”

“The LTA have been paying plenty of bills and built a fantastic facility at Roehampton, but we’re not producing many champions,” I argue.

“I have never heard so much negative stuff about the tennis centre in my life,” Gilbert counters. “Did you ever see the old facility at Queen’s? It was god-awful. I have zero problem with the new facility; it’s a beautiful place and they’ve done a great job. The problem now is that they need more players. Paul Annacone showed me a stat recently about France and England. They have the same population, right? But there’s something like 250,000 juniors playing in France and 10,000 in England! I don’t think it’s a culture thing or anything like that, I just think you need a better brand of males and females getting involved in the game, and more of them.”

“What do you mean by a better brand?” “Tim was a great player, but he came through on his own. You’ve got Murray now, but in France they’ve got about 20 guys coming through. They all want to be the first to win the Slam and they’re all pushing each other to new levels.”

“What about the point raised by Judy Murray this week that the British kids just aren’t hungry enough?” I ask.

“Okay,” he says, “but let’s take this guy right here [he points to the plasma TV in the corner showing a feature on Federer]. Now you could probably say that about Swiss people, right? Marcos Baghdatis is from Cyprus – they’ve never had a player! Switzerland never had a player. England has some good athletes, but they need more of them, and more competition.”

THE CONVERSATION has shifted to his life as a top-flight tennis coach. It began at an Italian restaurant in 1994 during a tournament he was playing in Florida. Agassi had invited him to dinner. The former boy wonder’s career was in tailspin and he needed help. Brad wasn’t short on ideas. One year after they started working together, Agassi had won two majors and rocketed from 31 to No 1 in the rankings.

“I loved the guy because he does things right,” Gilbert says. “He played, he trained, he gave respect to his opponent and he had such a big heart. I remember the first time we spent time with him, and my wife saying to me, ‘Why can’t you be like him?’ I learnt a lot. He had a heart of gold.”

After eight years as Agassi’s coach, he took a two-year sabbatical. In June 2003 he accepted an offer to coach a struggling Roddick, and within three months had helped the big-serving American to the US Open title. But the next year he was sacked.

“You spent just 18 months with Roddick,” I point out. “That doesn’t seem that long.”

“Yeah,” he responds, “and I thought there was a lot more to do, but that’s the thing with tennis. In soccer or American football, if the player and coach can’t stand each other, it’s not a problem, because the owner writes the cheque for both of them.

In tennis, the player is the guy signing the cheque, so if he’s not feeling it . . .”

“How did you spend the next 20 months?”

“I was working for ESPN and doing some corporate stuff. People called about coaching, but it’s a big commitment and time away from your family. And if you’re going to spend 35 weeks on the road, you’ve got to believe the guy can win and that you can help to make the difference.”

“And Murray was that guy?” “Yeah, I thought he was young enough and has the talent.”

“A lot of what has been reported since the split has focused on money.”

“Yeah, and to be honest, I don’t really want to get into this, but I’ll just say one thing: the money they reported isn’t the right number.”

“So the figures mentioned – and they varied from a half-million to three-quarters of a million – aren’t true?”

“Well, I was not being paid three-quarters of a million pounds. And I don’t know why there was such a big deal. It should be about results. If Sven-Göran Eriksson had won the World Cup, would the £5m [his salary] have been an issue?”

“No,” I concede, “and I understand that you don’t want to get into a tit-for-tat with Murray, but allow me to quote you something Pat Cash wrote: It remains to be seen whether the only party that is certainly going to profit from this rather predictable end to the British tennis year is Gilbert himself. Anyone who has seen his impressive home in Northern California’s Bay area will agree that he’s always watched his money wisely and invested with great intelligence. Now we must wait and see what he is left with after his lawyers and the LTA work out a severance package.”

“Well, Pat says some crazy stuff, and some of it is for shock value. I don’t know, maybe he wanted my job. Believe me, it’s not about the money. When I take a job, it becomes my life; I want to win more than anything. I want the player to do the best that he can. The losses hurt more as a coach than as a player, that’s what keeps you awake at night.”

“The money issue clearly irritates you?” “Yeah, people just latch on to that, but I’m not going to start ranting about it because it doesn’t do any good. I’ve moved on. I’m not going to be bitter. I don’t want to be involved in a he-said, she-said thing with the media because you are not going to win.”

“The parallels between Roddick and Murray are interesting; they were both roughly the same age when you started working with them and the relationship lasted roughly as long, 18 months. Did your personalities not fit?”

“I’d like to think that the results were okay. The results were okay.”

“A few years ago you were quoted as saying, ‘Maybe it’s my insecurity, but it would be really hard for me to coach a guy who didn’t love me as much as I loved him. There are coaches where the players respect them but they don’t like them. I couldn’t do that’.”

“Yeah, I mean, that’s honest, isn’t it?” “Yes it is.” “The only thing I’ll say about it is this: the new generation come with entourages around them, and with these entourages come egos and . . . hey, I’ve got an ego, I couldn’t be a good coach without an ego, but you get these other people around them with their egos and they start whispering in his ear and then ... Listen, as my wife says, nobody died. Only time will tell if he made the right decision.”

“You were obviously hurt by it?” “Well, I’ve had some experience with it now, so . . . with Andre we agreed it was just time; with Roddick, he fired me. So this is the second time. I guess in life sometimes it’s a character builder, but if you look at everybody I’ve coached from when I’ve started to when I’ve left – they’re not in a worse place.”

“So where does that leave you and your relationship with the LTA?”

“Well, unfortunately they don’t have enough guys playing at the higher levels, so I’ve got 20 weeks with Alex [Bogdanovic] and whatever they want me to do. I’d really like to be able to turn Alex around; he’s probably the most challenging player I’ve worked with, in that he’s obviously not at the level of an Andre or an Andy and it won’t be easy for him. I’m going to try to put him in a better place. Alex has talent and it’s not for the lack of effort he puts in, but if anything, maybe he needs more of a mean streak.”

“And what’s next for Brad Gilbert?” “Well, I’ve got this year [with the LTA] and I’d like to get back to doing some TV and some writing, and I’ll start coaching again if the right situation comes up, and I get a chance to go over to Berkeley [University] to watch my son play.”

“How’s he doing?” “He’s No 8 for his college team and his goal is to play top six. Last month I had him working with Paul Goldstein, and he’s a bit like Alex, in that Paul thinks he could do better, but he’s just too nice.”

“How can he have your blood in his veins and be too nice?”

“He’s more like his mom,” he laughs. “He’s incredibly smart, artistic and obviously has to deal with the pressure of everyone expecting him to be better [at tennis] than he is. But he’s a great kid.”

“And as a father that’s enough?” “Listen, he has never done anything wrong; I’ve never had a call from a teacher about bad grades or nothing.”

IT’S LATER that afternoon. He has just returned from collecting Zoe at school.

“Brad?” “Hey, buddy.” “I’ve finished the transcription and can read you that stuff about Agassi.”

“Great.” “It was a question about an interview you gave to The New York Times where you described him as really getting ‘it’. I asked what you meant by ‘it.’ This is what you said: ‘There are a lot of superstars that you feel awe or nervous around, but he doesn’t give off that vibe at all. There could be 20 people in this room and he would engage everybody. He has that rare ability to make everybody feel comfortable. He doesn’t want anyone falling over him because he’s a great tennis player. He’s thoughtful, incredibly smart; a person you would want to sit down to have a beer with. That’s what I mean by ‘it’.”

“No, that’s fine,” he says, “that’s exactly what I wanted to say.”

“I’ve a couple more questions for you.” “Okay, shoot.” “You made the point a few years ago that one of the things you admired about Roddick was the manner in which he had fired his previous coach, Tarik Benhabiles, just before you started working with him. I quote, ‘Andy doesn’t get enough credit for the fact that he got on a train, went to Paris and told Tarik the news in person; 99.9% of touring pros would’ve done it over the phone. Or by e-mail. Or had someone else do it. Not Andy – he’s a grown-up in a 20-year-old body’.”

“Yeah, I thought it was nice that he told him in person.”

“Did he tell you in person?” “No, he told me over the telephone.” “Did Andy Murray tell you in person?” “No.” “It was Patricio [Apey, Murray’s agent]?” “I don’t really want to get into that.” “Do you know if he ever read your book?”

“I don’t know. It would have been here in the cottage when he stayed here, but I don’t have an answer on that.”

“You described the spilt with Agassi as ‘a good divorce’. Were Roddick and Murray bad divorces?”

“They were early divorces; I could have done more, but that’s the thing in coaching – it’s one-on-one, and if they’re not feeling it, you don’t want to stand in their way.”

“Do you see a Brit winning Wimbledon in your lifetime?”

“Well, Andy Murray has a shot. Tim [Henman] was in the thick of things for 10 years; Andy will have at least 10 reasonable shots to win it. Or who knows? Maybe there is some 16-year-old out there we don’t know yet. But I would definitely say that he’s [Murray] within striking distance and that it’s only up to him now.”

The good, the bad and the ugly

- Gilbert was born on August 9, 1961, in Oakland, California

- He was a member of the American Junior Davis Cup team in 1981 and turned professional the following year

- As a player he won 20 singles titles and three doubles titles. A gritty, resilient competitor, he beat Boris Becker three times in 1987 and enjoyed his best year in 1989, when he won fi ve tournaments

- Gilbert won a bronze medal at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, losing to fellow American Tim Mayotte in the semifi nals

- He began coaching at the age of 33 and helped Andre Agassi to rebuild his career. During their eight-year partnership, Agassi won six Grand Slam singles titles

- Andy Roddick won the 2003 US Open under Gilbert’s guidance and in 2006 the coach began working with Britain’s Andy Murray. The Scot made impressive progress but the pair parted company last year. Gilbert continues to work with the Lawn Tennis Association

- Gilbert’s book Winning Ugly advised players how to beat supposedly superior opponents. His methods included destroying his opponent’s rhythm and targeting their weaknesses

- A keen sports fan, he supports the Oakland Raiders in the NFL and the Oakland Athletics in baseball