Shvitz
game improved, as did his fan
support.
A Gilbert rooting section —
all female, apparently —
began yelling "Go, Brad!"
before he served. Gilbert
would hear them, look in
their direction and, hand cup-
ped around his ear, would mo-
tion them to pump up the
volume. His new-found fans
didn't spur him to victory, but
his good-natured kidding and
play no doubt earned fans'
respect.
Next is Gilbert's return to
the Davis Cup, where he
holds a career singles mark of
4-2. His singles teammate
will be Aaron Krickstein of
Grosse Point Woods, giving
the U.S. an all-Jewish front
line. The pair will play two
matches apiece against Mex-
ico's best, with a doubles
match rounding out the best-
of-five event.
Giblert has known Krick-
stein since the latter was 14
years old.
"I think Aaron's enjoying
himself a little more now,"
Gilbert says. "I think he's
grown up a little bit.
"I think when he was 16, he
was put right in the spotlight
and I don't think that, emo-
tionally, he was ready for
that. And as he started to
grow up a little bit, he had a
few injuries.
"Part of the reason why he's
playing a lot better is, he's en-
joying himself. I think that
when he was 16 or 17, he was
trying to fulfill a lot of peo-
ple's expectations. You kind of
lose sight of what's really at
hand."
Gilbert, a native of
Oakland, Calif., did not have
high expectations as a
teenaged player. Unlike most
of today's phenoms, such as
Agassi, Chang and Kricks-
tein, Gilbert was not even
close to professional-caliber
tennis until he was an "old
man" of 20.
"I didn't get really serious
about tennis until I was 18,"
he explains, "because my
junior career wasn't that
good. My game just didn't
develop from the time I was
15 to 18.
"I was real good when I was
12, and then by the time I was
14, I was a has-been. By the
time I was 16, I was a never-
was-been. But I kind of turn-
ed it around a little bit when
I was 18."
Gilbert said his physical
growth was stunted. "Then,
all of a sudden, my freshman
year of college I grew from
5-foot-6 to 6-foot-1. And then,
all of a sudden, I grew into my
game a little."
Gilbert stuck with tennis,
but only because he felt he
could earn a college athletic
scholarship with it.
"I wasn't really that en-
thusiastic when I was 17," he
recalls. "I was just going
through the motions, I was
just kind of trying to get a
scholarship." He got a
scholarship to Arizona State,
but his attitude did not im-
prove and he left Arizona
State after one year. The
move became a turning point
in his life.
He enrolled at a junior col-
lege, "and that turned out to
be the best move of my career;
I met my present coach, Tom
Chivington, and I've been
with him for 10 years.
"He saw some potential in
me and said, 'Listen, it's
either now or never. That was
the first time that I'd ever
worked hard and it paid off."
Gilbert transferred to Pep-
perdine College, achieving a
ranking of 282 at the end of
1981. The next year, he
finished second to the Univer-
sity of Michigan's Mike Leach
in • the NCAA singles
championships.
JCC Men's Health Club Membership
$150 off in January!
(Now that's something to Shvitz about!)
• must not have been a health club member in past year.
• 1/2 down, balance in 90 days.
• good January 1990 only.
For more information contact the Membership Office 661-1000 ext. 265, 266
Then Gilbert turned pro
and scored a victory in the
Tapiei International tourna-
ment. His world rating zoom-
ed to 54.
His ranking fell to 62nd in
1983 but improved to 23rd in
1984 on the strength of two
tourney victories. Gilbert
made his mark in Israel in
1985, when he won both the
Maccabiah and the Israeli
Tennis Center professional
tournament. He's since won
the ITC in 1986 and 1988. He
won the ITC doubles with Ilie
Nastase in '85.
Entering 1990, Gilbert had
16 pro tourney victories. He
also has a bronze medal from
the 1988 Summer Olympics
in Seoul — earned despite his
playing on an injured ankle.
Off the court, among his
fellow pros, Gilbert is con-
sidered one of the prime wits
of the tour. On the court,
however, he lacks notoriety.
"Maybe I don't have the
personality on the court, like
Agassi or Chang or
McEnroe," he says, adding the
facts he's a little older and
didn't have a meteoric rise
also may have kept him from
the limelight. "I've kind of
been steady my whole career
and I've been getting better
with age."
Gilbert owns four victories
over Boris Becker in six
career meetings, but says, "I
haven't had such good luck
with (Ivan) Lendl.
"I need to play better in a
major, but also I need to play
a little more agressively and
I need to take a few more
chances,"he notes.
"I have a very relaxed game
(verb, noun) . . . Sounds like it's spelled (Sh...viz) . . . The
act of sweating during all areas of fitness offered at the
JCC Men's Health Club. A place to sit and sweat and
shmooze after a game of tennis or racquetball, squash,
walleyball, swimming, jogging or just to relax.
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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
49