CTC Shorts with Tom Gullikson

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Daniel Kiernan  00:09

Welcome to Episode 208 of Control the Controllables and this is our second podcast short. This is coming from Tom Gullikson the great Tom Gullikson. Now, I genuinely have never spoken to a storyteller. Like Tom, you know he's incredible. You know I'm fortunate that every now and then we speak on the phone. And wherever I am I drop everything. Because when Gully speaks, you listen. And this clip that we're going to share with you get the tissues ready if his tears, he shows the vulnerability to be able to share one of the most heartwarming heartbreaking stories that you ever will about his brother, Tim, who was the late great Tim Gullikson, who coached Pete Sampras, so listen out, enjoy the amazing storyteller. That is Tom Gullickson.

Tom Gullikson  01:12

Tim and I played in the golden era of men's professional tennis, in 79, Tim Gullikson, was ranked 18th in the world. And he was 11. In the US, he was even in the top 10. And now our number one player in the US is ranked 25 or something in the world. You know, is there anything?

Daniel Kiernan  01:32

Why? Why though? That's a That's a? I can't I can't let you go on that because that's a that's a massive topic. That is, you know, if we talking about the dominance that it was then compared to, for the size of the USA, the relative success that it does or doesn't have now

Tom Gullikson  01:50

In my mind, every every kind of country, it has its own brand, you know, US isn't going to be Spain, and Spain is not going to be the US and England's not going to be France you know, and the lot of the Federation's have tried that they've hired people from other countries to try to inject kind of their kind of culture and brand if you will, it doesn't work. And I told this to the USTA. So listen, you know, we were playing and we had all these great American players to battle with Connors, you know, McEnroe. did Solomon, Godfrey, tenor, you know, you name it, sticky Stockton, you know, we had a brand, American tennis, what did it mean, to play an American American guys were really good athletes. They were great competitors. They were tough. They had really good kind of aggressive games, you know, even within whatever style they play, they were playing to win. They were not playing, not to lose. And so that was the brand. And I think a lot of places, they don't have a brand. You know, and Americans by nature are kind of aggressive, they're hard working, they go for it, they dream big they, that should be kind of the baseline of how you want to structure a program for American players.

Daniel Kiernan  03:25

And I feel that actually, I mean, obviously we spoke off air, I went to LSU. And before I went to LSU, I was probably ranked 50 or 60 in the world, juniors dumped singles and top 10 in the world doubles. I thought I was rubbish in I was in an environment where we had Martin Lee who was World Junior number one we had, you know, we had we had good good players who I was training with. And I think probably the UK that there's we downplay things, we're a bit dour on certain things. And I went to America and everyone was like, so upbeat. And so like, and I remember after then it worked worked for me after like three weeks. I was like, oh my god, I'm I'm good. I'm really, you know, I felt it. And that brand that you're talking about. It was very clear to me that was also what a college player did. You served big you came forward. You know, you look to hit big forehand. You look to finish it the net, you were aggressive the way you play doubles. And that was what back in 98. And again, that massively suited me. Do you feel that that's not there anymore?

Tom Gullikson  04:36

Well, I think people have kind of lost their way a little bit. It was interesting. I love listening to Federer and Nadal and Djokovic, I love listening to all these kind of interviews and you know, I love getting the players thinking it's one thing to watch them play and they're all amazing players, but I love the process. They go through the thought process and how great their minds are. And Federer said something really interesting. And he's 100%. Right? I think the question was, why aren't these guys beating you now? I mean, you and Nadal, you know, you're 38 or 39, and the adults 30 354 Or five and Djokovic is in his early 30s. These young guns should be beating you guys. You know, just like you started beating Hill, the older players when you were coming up. And he said, you know, most of those guys hit the ball great, but they have no clue how to transition or finish at the net. You know, they have a very kind of one dimensional game. And, you know, one of my own personal coaching philosophies and when I was director of coaching for the USTA when I worked with the pros, my goal is to help create players who are aggressive, all court players, and I call it the three C's. I want you to be competent, confident, and comfortable in all three parts of the court. The back court, the mid court, which is a big mystery to a lot of players, and also the front court, which is normally where they go to shake hands and pick up the big cardboard check at the end of the tournament. They have no clue what the front court is about. They have a little bit of mystery about the mid court only hitting winners from the mid court maybe they can step up and whack a big forehand or something. But, you know, most of our junior players now you know, 95% of their tennis experience is just at the baseline, whacking balls as hard as they can with a set of blocks along and you know, strong kind of loose and swinging hard and rip and big topspin balls and maybe flattening out a higher one. But you know, there's I don't think coaches and academies and Federations spend enough time in skill development. When you look at Federer, you know, he goes to a court if you compare him to a bow hunter, okay. He goes out bow hunting, and he's got 20 arrows in his quiver. And if one arrow he misses with one, he grabs another arrow and shoots another arrow. So when he walks on a tennis court, he's got 20 So this is something I learned from my late brother Tim, he was big on this quiver thing. He goes, You know, I want you to have a lot of arrows I want you to have more arrows and the guy that you're playing against and you know, Timmy coach Sampras for five years, and got him winning Wimbledon every year. Pete's record before he started working with Tim was to first round losses and one second round loss. He had no clue how to play on grass, before he met Tim Gullickson. And, you know, Tim played me every day of his life. So nobody was better at returning a lefty surf, because I had a good lefty serve Him. He played me every day at a great backhand return. He had the block, he had the nice chip, and he drove the ball but he'd stay on the plane of the ball. He wouldn't come up on it too much and Sampras, he would try to turn against the lefty surf and his swing plane on his backhand return was almost straight up in a ball is coming 130 on a on a horizontal plane and your racket is strings are going vertically up. The chances of those two meeting are not very good. So you know, Timmy taught him how to return serve against a lefty and he won Wimbledon seven out of the next eight years. Yeah. So not not not a bad not a bad result there for young Pete Sampras. And, you know, Timmy passed away 44 In May of 96. And Pete actually put his

Daniel Kiernan  09:05

Take your time.

Tom Gullikson  09:09

Yeah, Pete put his first Wimbledon trophy in the casket. And he said Tim not only taught me how to be a Wimbledon champion, how to be a winner in life in Wimbledon was so touched by that. And obviously, you know, they took the trophy out and gave it to the family and Rosemary and the kids. Eric and Megan Wimbledon, who's not in the habit of making it making Wimbledon trophy replicas, they made Pete a replica of that trophy, because they were so touched by that. One

Daniel Kiernan  09:48

Amazing. Thank you for sharing that story. And in terms of in terms of Tim, and what I think some sometimes in life We, we don't realize what we have until we lose it. And and, you know, we're talking now 25 years, you know, and how much of an impact is Tim been for you over the last 25 years through not being here and the lessons that he taught you and your relationship that you obviously have had at source been so special?

Tom Gullikson  10:25

Yeah, well, I still miss him every day. Think about him a lot. And, you know, there were kind of over 900 people at his funeral. So he obviously was, you know, there's some people you meet that are real impact players. And, you know, Timmy Timmy had a real positive impact. You know, he was he was a hell of a player. He was a great competitor. He didn't have that many arrows in his quiver. But you know, he would win his matches, eight, six in the fifth. He beat Ramirez one one year on court to Wimbledon, eight, six on the fifth. He took out Johnny Mac, in 70 942, and four on port two. And I had lost the Johnny Mac in the third round that year. And so Timmy is playing Johnny Mac in the round of 16 on court to he's playing great. He always played great against lefties, you know, he's up 646251 just toying with him. By 25354 serving for the match at five for 1540 he serves a second serve, and he stays back and he was a serve and volley are of the highest order. Stage back Mac hits that little bump back in return that he used to hit that block kind of bunts, Timmy takes a short ball ripsi approach comes in knocked off the volley wins like six four in the in the third set and people go nuts. Obviously McEnroe was a second seat. I think that your court too, of course was called the graveyard court because he didn't like playing there. And Tammy goes in the pressroom after the match and he goes, nobody beats the goalie brothers back to back. Brilliant stuff.

Daniel Kiernan  12:34

Absolutely amazing. And, and how special was 1983 the year that you guys made a Wimbledon final together.

Tom Gullikson  12:43

That was fun. Because we had gotten divorced the year before we took a year off and 82 we had gotten a little stale and my singles dropped a bit. And I think he felt a little extra pressure to do really well in doubles, because I wasn't doing so well in singles at the time. And he was playing much better singles than me. So we kind of took a year off and in that year was kind of fun playing with different players because obviously, as you know, and being a good doubles player, you pick up bits and pieces from everyone you play doubles with, you know, and if you can find one little nugget from everybody you play with you. It just adds to your overall ability as a doubles player. And then we got back together and 83 out a great year. You know, we won the two warm up tournament we won Queen's and we won Bristol. And then then, you know we ended up losing Johnny and and Peter Fleming, you know in the final but it was pretty special. You know we're here we are two boys from lacrosse Wisconsin who'd never had a private lesson and never played a National Junior tournament, getting our runner up medals from from the Duke and Duchess of Kent, you know, and Timmy looks over at me with this great smile that he had. And he goes bad for a couple of small town boys from Alaska, Wisconsin. We we enjoyed that. Yeah, that was great.

Daniel Kiernan  14:18

Nobody can ever take those memories away from your tongue, you know, and it's as an unknown it is an emotive topic and I think it's so lovely hearing the stories on Tim, you know, and I think everyone in the tennis world followed obviously the story with Pete Sampras so closely and if we you know, we go back to 1995 the Australian Open you know, when you know, Pete was Pete was in tears on the court and right how how was that moment? I guess it at the time. Did you know how early was at the time what was?

Tom Gullikson  14:55

Well, he you know, unfortunately and We had, you know, had real fears in 94. I mean, it happened to him twice and 94 He, he, he had an incident in a in the hotel room in Stockholm, where he was ordering a transport car and you know, the house phone in his hotel room. They got the grand they were staying was on a like a plate glass table any any kind of had a seizure, and he fell against the plate glass table and cut up his face and, and he somehow must have passed out. But he crawled out to the hallway. And Bob Brett who unfortunately passed away recently, it was a great guy and a great coach. Bob Brett was like going to his room and he saw him and they got him to the hospital right away. And unfortunately, they never checked his brain. They checked his heart. And like a lot of pro athletes, he had a little bit of an enlarged heart. They thought it was some kind of a heart issue, but they never really did a brain scan. And then fast forward six weeks temiz with Pete over in Germany, at the ATP finals, you know, Tim's lovely wife, Rosemary was an intensive care nurse before she became a lawyer. And he was speaking to her on the on the phone from the hotel, and he started garbling His Word so he she immediately knew he was having a seizure. So she hung up and called the hotel. And sure enough, they went up to the room and he was having another seizure. So they got him to the hospital there. So he'd already had two incidents. And then I was actually with him. Because, you know, I was with Tim. And I think Pete was playing his second round match at the Australian, we were in the locker room, and he didn't really look good. And right before Pete went out to play a second round, you know, Tim had a seizure, kind of like a like an epileptic fit almost, or in the locker room. And fortunately, the hospital is only five minutes, you know, from Melbourne Park. So we got him to the hospital right away. And they did take a brain scan. And unfortunately, the doctor gave me the terrible news. And he kind of thought it was brain cancer. And those four spots look like for tumors, you know, but couldn't confirm that until you take a biopsy, of course and take a little piece of it out. And they certainly weren't going to do that there. So I actually stayed in the hospital with him for like, three or four nights. And the last night we were there. You know, and Pete was obviously really upset and everybody was upset. Tim, Tim was a pretty popular guy. And we were getting a lot of visitors. And the night before I flew back to Chicago. The doctor said, Well, why don't you tell attempts, pretty heavily medicated. He's not really in danger of having another seizure. So why don't you get him out of the hotel, go to dinner. So I got a group of very special close friends like Ian Hamilton, who was a Nike guy who was great friends of Tim and I. And Todd Martin was close friend of mine and Tim's and coach Todd for a while through the USTA and Jim Courier who was very close to to me and Tim, and Pete. And we all went out to dinner. And just to show our support for Tim, you know, and Pete and Jim were playing against each other the next day. Clearly, they were real rivals for Grand Slam title. So, you know, they were friends, and they really respected each other on and off the court. But they weren't exactly hanging out. They all had their own little teams, you know, that they spent time with and I'll never forget, we went out to the really nice restaurant for dinner and just Timmy was there and just, you know, everybody was just there to support him, you know. And the next day I flew him back to Chicago, and then he had to he had a biopsy to to see what was in there. And sure enough, it was brain cancer, you know. And then that day that was the day that I think Pete and Jim played in the quarterfinal

Daniel Kiernan  19:53

And such such a tragic tragic story, Tom and I think but what a lovely memory that you're able to have to be able to have have that time with with those players and, and one thing that was that really sprung to mind when I was looking into into your career a little bit more before before this talk was that you then went on to win the Davis Cup with USA in 1995. You then went on to be Team USA Captain when Andre won won the gold medal in 1996. You know how I guess? How were you able to cope at that time with that going on? And then how special were those victories? Almost that I'm sure at the time were very much dedicated to Tim as well.

Tom Gullikson  20:44

No doubt. And I leaned on Tim a lot for advice, especially with Pete. Because I mean, Tim and Pete had a really special bond. And only you know, the Tim really teach Pete a lot about tennis. He taught him a lot about how to compete. He put the compete in Pete Yeah, the CRM part, you know, and he told Pete one time he goes, You know what, because Pete was, he was an artist, he wasn't like a more mechanical player like Lando or courier who were out doing grills, you know, six hours a day. And, you know, he was an artist, he had to, like feel the ball. And he told Timmy, you know, who got up to 15 in the world, being an amazing competitor. You know, he told him when they first started, he goes, you know, you know, some days I just don't feel the ball, you know, I don't feel the ball and other days where I'm not striking the ball. I'm not saying that I accept losing, but I almost kind of feel like I'm gonna lose. him just kind of looked at him and he goes, good. He goes, You have every shot in the book. You're an unbelievable athlete. You're one of the top three or four athletes on the tour in terms of movement and jumping and, and just dynamic, you know, balance. You got incredible hands, you can do anything with the ball. He goes on the day, he kind of grabbed he had like a white t shirt on right? And so he kind of grabbed Pete by the collar. Pete That's not acceptable. As long as I'm coaching you. That's 100% not acceptable. On the days where you're not feeling it where you're not Mr. Artists, like striking the ball really clean. He said, Take this little white house birdies collar off and put your blue collar on and beat the guy being an athlete and a competitor. You're not always going to have your a tennis game. So on the days, you know, there's, there's the three pieces right there. There's a tennis player, as an athlete, as a competitor. And you know, he got the actual tennis game. Yeah, but beat him as an app, a competitor beat him with your physicality, be it better athlete than this guy. And Pete really learned how to compete you know, that was one of the great gifts that Tim added to Sanford's his game other than the technical skills of like how to return serve and how to play against lefties. I mean, Pete couldn't beat a lefty. I mean, in the 91 I think Davis Cup final we lost a France and he lost a lecan and for Jay, both in straight sets, you know, because he couldn't return a lefty sir. And then after Timmy started coaching Pete and teaching him how to hit a backhand return and teaching them how to play against lefties in terms of positioning and the patterns and everything that you totally have to switch against the lefty Pete's record with against lefties after that was like 45 and Oh or something. So he's like never lost to a lefty. So, so Timmy taught Pete a lot of lessons, you know, just tennis lessons and then off court stuff as well. Tim, treated everyone the same. He would teach treat Lille, the locker room guy at Wimbledon, the same as Phil Knight, the CEO of Nike. He had a nice word for everyone.

Daniel Kiernan  24:23

You know, there's something about speaking to Tom and I've told that story to many people and it's quite an incredible skill because when I tell that story, I fill it with emotion. I get goosebumps and, and I I feel like I was there with him. His ability to get you transfixed into his world is is really truly incredible. And obviously this has been quite a therapeutic process going through all of these All podcasts and picking out the some real key moments that we want to share with you. And once again, it's hit every emotional note. I thank Tom again for sharing that story for sharing his insight, his knowledge. And I hope you enjoyed that wherever you are. Thanks again for listening. Please do give us some feedback. Are you enjoying the Podcast Shorts? You know, can you jump onto your podcast platform? Give us a rating give us a review. Let us know what you think. But wherever you are in the world enjoy this festive period that is coming up. I hope you get to spend lots of quality time with your families. But until next time, I'm Dan Kiernan and we are Control the Controllables