The last time San Francisco hosted a significant professional tennis tournament, Brad Gilbert was playing, and Andre Agassi was on the other side of the net. It was the city’s 1993 Volvo Tennis Championships tournament final at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. Gilbert lost in three sets.
The following year, Gilbert, an Oakland native and longtime Bay Area fixture, started coaching Agassi. One year after that, Agassi was the No. 1 male player in the world. It was one of the most sensational player-coach stories in tennis history, much of it described in Agassi’s autobiography Open.
But as Agassi’s and Gilbert’s stars rose, the San Francisco tournament dimmed. In 1994, it moved to the HP Pavilion (now SAP Center) in San Jose, then it was downgraded to a lesser status by the Association of Tennis Professionals, the sport’s governing body. While Agassi and other American stars, including Pete Sampras and Andy Roddick, once played in the event, the tournament had faded by 2014. A professional women’s tournament called the Silicon Valley Classic suffered a similar fate.
Next week, however, Gilbert, Agassi, and more than a dozen of the biggest names in men’s professional tennis will be at Chase Center in San Francisco to participate in the Laver Cup, a three-day long tournament that Gilbert hopes will restore the city’s status as an important stop on the men’s tennis tour.
“This is a great test to see how San Francisco responds to the Laver Cup,” Gilbert, 64, told Gazetteer SF. He’ll be there doing commentary for the Tennis Channel. “I think they’ll sell it out. And then we’ll see if somebody’s interested in figuring out, you know, if San Francisco should have a tournament, or the Bay Area should have a tournament. So I’m hoping this is the impetus for something coming back.”
Professional tennis has four sacred, unmovable Grand Slam competitions: the Australian Open, Roland Garros (aka the French Open), Wimbledon, and the US Open in New York. It has other tournaments that range in prestige and ranking points awarded to the winners. The San Francisco tournament, which started in 1889 in Monterey as the Pacific Coast Championships, was the second-oldest ongoing tennis tournament in the US.
Like so many other pieces of San Francisco history, culture and character, the city’s tennis tournament was extinguished by Silicon Valley — at least by proxy. In 2009, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison bought the Indian Wells Open, near Palm Springs. The tournament, now called BNP Parabis Open, ranks just below the Grand Slams in prestige and points, and has grown into the best-attended tennis event outside the top four events. The Bay Area tournament and another like it in Los Angeles couldn’t compete.
The Laver Cup’s unique format features Team Europe against Team World. Captained by Agassi, Team World has some of the top players in the US, including Taylor Fritz. The tournament isn’t sponsored by the men’s tour, and it doesn’t award ranking points, but Gilbert insists it’s more than an exhibition played purely for entertainment or charities.
“The results count on your record,” Gilbert explained. “There’s a lot of money at stake, and bonuses for the players. They’re playing to win this thing.” Besides undisclosed appearance fees, which differ between players, each of the six players on the winning team gets $250,000.
Gilbert is better known these days as an analyst for ESPN who appears regularly at the Grand Slams alongside John and Patrick McEnroe, and as a coach, most recently for Coco Gauff. He’s currently working as a technical advisor for a movie that he can’t disclose. (Another film he worked on, The Dink, featuring Roddick, will be released in April.)
Gilbert splits his time between homes in Malibu and Marin, where he’s lived for more than 30 years. He owns a tennis store in Greenbrae, 30 minutes north of the city, called Brad Gilbert Tennis Nation.
Gilbert says that a big draw for this year’s Laver Cup is Carlos Alcaraz, the 22-year-old Spanish sensation, who just last weekend won the US Open. Besides possessing supernatural athletic ability, he plays with an infectious joy. He reminds Gilbert of Steph Curry, who, it’s worth noting, went to see Alcaraz play in the U.S. Open final.
“Both are undersized, amazing at what they do,” Gilbert enthused. “They’re both smiling assassins.”
Gilbert wants to see Curry in the stands at Chase for the competition, and expects that he won’t be there alone.
“Hopefully, you know, the Bay Area is going to pack this place out, and we’re going to get, like, 18,000 people there.”
