THE ONE TO BEAT? : Gilbert Will Try to Make U.S. Open His Fourth Tournament Title in Row

In the last three weeks, Brad Gilbert has won in Vermont, in New Jersey and in Ohio. Now, if he can just win again in this two-week tournament called the U.S. Open, Gilbert will be in a state of disbelief.

“I’d stand on my head for weeks if I won this tournament,” Gilbert said.

Gilbert has turned men’s tennis upside down with his successful stretch on the hardcourts that might establish him as one of the favorites to win the Open, which begins here Monday at the National Tennis Center.

But Gilbert, who has never won a Grand Slam event in nine years on the men’s tour, doesn’t know if he would put himself among his own favorites: Boris Becker, John McEnroe, Ivan Lendl, Stefan Edberg.

“Then again, I feel like if the right situations occur, I think I have a good chance,” Gilbert said. “I’m playing well. I’m definitely not the favorite to win it because I’ve never won a major. But I’m not ruling out the possibility.”

In the last month, Gilbert hasn’t paid much attention to the odds. He is the first player to have won three tournaments in succession since Becker in 1986. And Gilbert also became the first to reach four consecutive finals since Lendl seven years ago.

Said Gilbert: “I guess I’m in some pretty good company. I guess I’m on a roll.”

No kidding. He began his streak by making it to the final in Washington, where he lost to Tim Mayotte. He hasn’t lost a match since.

From July 31-Aug. 20, the 28-year-old from Piedmont, Calif. is 17-0, his ranking has improved to No. 8 and he is the winner of the last three tournaments. He beat Jim Pugh in the final at Stratton Mountain, Vt. He beat Jason Stoltenberg for the title the next week at Livingston, N.J.

And he kept going at the Assn. of Tennis Professionals tournament at Kings Island, Ohio. He won with a flourish, scoring victories over No. 6 Michael Chang in the quarterfinals, No. 2 Boris Becker in the semifinals and No. 3 Stefan Edberg in last Sunday’s final.

Chang’s quarterfinal match against Gilbert lasted three hours and was twice interrupted by rain, but he said he was not beaten by a fair-weather player.

“Brad does whatever it takes to win,” Chang said. “Against me, he’d scramble and run down a lot of shots. He also attacked more and was a lot more confident. He’s probably just on a roll.”

Gilbert not only beat three top-10 players to win the ATP championship, he also broke a streak against Edberg and continued one against Becker. Edberg had won all four of his previous hardcourt matches against Gilbert, who is 4-1 against Becker and one of only three players who have at least three victories against him. The others are Lendl, 7-6, and Edberg, 7-11.

His victory against Becker may have been the result of a surprise tactic, Gilbert said.

“After I lost the first set, I think I really surprised him by coming to the net on his second serve,” Gilbert said. “I think I really frustrate him. I make him play. He knows when he plays me, he’s got to work hard to beat me. Plus, I return his serve well, I think. He doesn’t get as many free points off me as he does off some other guys.”

Both Chang and Edberg were serving for the match against Gilbert, who broke their serves both times to give himself a chance to win. This may be the ultimate Gilbert, the classic counterpuncher who returns everything and tries to let the other guy make the error. To some, this is winning ugly.

“Sometimes I make guys play bad, the way I play,” Gilbert acknowledged. “But the thing is, I actually think I’ve been playing a lot more aggressively this summer. I’m doing some things better. And I think I’ve been volleying a lot better. I’ve been very opportunistic.”

Coincidence or not, good things have been happening to Gilbert since he accepted the opportunity to be a last-minute replacement for McEnroe on the U.S. Davis Cup team. The week after McEnroe suffered a shoulder injury at Wimbledon, he pulled out of a Davis Cup semifinal showdown against West Germany in Munich.

Tom Gorman, the U.S. captain, asked Mayotte and Chang to play, but both turned him down. Finally, Gorman turned to Gilbert. As it turned out, Gilbert won both his singles matches and accounted for the only U.S. points in a 3-2 loss to West Germany.

“Mentally, I’m a little tougher,” Gilbert said. “Davis Cup helped me a lot. It toughened me up.”

So counting Davis Cup play, Gilbert is 25-1 since Wimbledon. This is a record that reflects two things: Gilbert is playing well and he is playing a lot. But has he played too much?

He has logged 40 sets of tennis in his last three tournaments.

“A lot of people think I’m going to be burned out for the Open,” Gilbert said. “The thing is, when I entered these tournaments I didn’t think about winning them or being in the finals four weeks in a row. So I might have had a few days off or I might have had a bad week and not played so much as I did. It just happened like that.”

This success story certainly did not happen overnight. Born in Oakland, Gilbert began playing tennis when he was 5.

He attended Foothill College in Los Altos for one year and then transferred to Pepperdine. In 1982, Gilbert finished his All-American season by making the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. singles final, losing to Mike Leach.

He turned pro and won a tournament at Taipei, Taiwan, his first year. Now in his ninth year on the tour, Gilbert has proved to be a steady if unspectacular performer. He won 12 tournaments before this year, but in Grand Slam events has never advanced further than the quarterfinals, that in the 1987 U.S. Open.

With four more tournament victories this year, Gilbert has banked $456,057 and increased his total to nearly $2.2 million.

Gilbert considers that pretty good for someone who isn’t exactly the biggest name in tennis, no matter what he has been doing to change that image in the last few weeks.

“The thing is, I never had the big splurge, like a Chang, a Becker or an Edberg,” Gilbert said. “I guess I’ve had gradual progress. A lot of times, people tend to forget about me. A lot of times, I’m No. 12, 13 in the world and they just take it for granted that I’m there. Then there’s always guys bursting on the scene. But it doesn’t bother me (that) I haven’t got the big-time publicity in my career.

“You know, I go about my job and can’t worry what people think about you,” he said. “It’s nice that all of a sudden everybody is paying attention to you, but if I drop a little bit, it’s gone.”

Gilbert’s ranking has reflected his recent good fortune. He finished last year ranked No. 22, but his current No. 8 could turn to No. 6 if he does well at the Open. Gilbert is less than two computer points behind sixth-ranked Andre Agassi.

Gilbert also finished last year as a wreck. He missed the first eight months of the season after an operation to remove scar tissue from his left ankle.

He won one event last year, at Tel Aviv, as well as a bronze medal in the Seoul Olympics, but he also finished the year the same way he had begun it, by having an operation. In November, Gilbert had surgery on both his big toes. Gilbert had turf toe, a condition caused by continual running on hard courts. “It was a tough year to go through,” he said.

Shortly before Christmas, Gilbert began practicing again and he trained hard for eight weeks. He worked out in Oakland with Mike Grabow, who also trains Chris Mullen of the Golden State Warriors.

The first tournament Gilbert played this year was at Memphis, Tenn., and he won. A few weeks later, he pulled stomach muscles at the Newsweek Champions Cup at Indian Wells and wound up having to serve underhanded to Jay Berger. Gilbert lost, but he finished the match.

That is considered typical Gilbert court behavior. He gets dirty. He returns bullet serves. He waits for the other guy to make a mistake. He won’t quit.

But will the U.S. Open be his fourth consecutive victory?

The way things have been going lately, Gilbert certainly can’t quibble about his preparation. Even so, he doesn’t view his streak as other people do. It’s like, ‘Remember that streak? Now, forget it.’

“Look, you never really think about a streak,” he said. “If it happens, you just kind of ride the wave. If you start thinking about a streak, you get awfully complacent. Once you win, you’ve got to forget about it.

“I feel awfully strong going into the Open, but I think when you win, you’ve got to put it out of your mind. You can’t get caught up in your victories because you’ve got a long way to fall. I know.”