The American tennis player Brad Gilbert called his book Winning Ugly: Mental Warfare in Tennis. It was written with Steve Jamison and carries a copyright date of 1993. Gilbert reached No. 4 in the world “with mediocre technique but a razor-sharp mind,” as one tennis site put it. In the book Gilbert told readers to “play better tennis without better strokes.”
In 1994 Andre Agassi hired Gilbert as his coach. Agassi was struggling with a wrist injury. Twelve months later he was No. 1 in the world. Agassi said: “Brad made me believe I could beat anyone.” In 2013 the publisher called the book “the bible of tennis instruction books for countless players worldwide.”