Winning ugly! That phrase was mostly associated with American tennis star Brad Gilbert, whose style of playing a slow, grinding rhythm destroyed his more glamorous opponents like Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and Jimmy Connors. 

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It also forced from John McEnroe that famous quote - “Gilbert, you don’t deserve to be on the same court with me!”

Of course, all fans love winners. They are to us the beacons of all that should be good in a game. They are supermen, achieving what we only dream of. We admire their achievements as much we worship their image.

Winners are all beautiful people. Sporting heroes are our demigods. 

But when someone wins 'ugly', that image fades. The word 'ugly' is usually associated with villains, and the role of villains is to destroy the beauty in everything.

Watching Gilbert play tennis is the same as watching Quasimodo triumph in a Parisian beauty contest by repulsing every other contestant off the stage. It is a revolting sight and one that pollutes our very definition of the sporting hero.

Which is why, when we think of tennis greats, we never think of Gilbert despite him ranking as high as eighth in the all-time prize money list in 1991. We prefer to think of anybody else.

Jenson Button is about to win the F1 Drivers' Championship.  This on the back of six victories in the early season driving a car engineered within a whisker of breaking the rules and which was at the time untouchable. 

When the other teams caught up with Brawn GP’s technical advantage, Button never won again. Instead, since his last victory in Turkey, he has finished on the podium only once, and that was taking second at Monza in Italy. 

What other points he has scored to keep him at the top of the Driver’s Championship leader board was ground out by 'ugly' driving – where he played safe and did just enough to score some points and no more.

In the meantime, Button’s teammate Rubens Barrichello and Red Bull Racing’s Sebastian Vettel have charged up interest in this season’s competition by delivering some stirring drives. 

Rubens underlined his teammate’s 'ugly' attitude by whipping a similar car to top position in the Grand Prix of Europe and in Italy. 

Vettel’s efforts are even more rousing. Despite scoring nothing in the first two races of the season and retiring in Monaco, Hungary and in the Grand Prix of Europe, he has not failed to finish outside the points. 

In that span, he has won three races  - in China, Britain and lately Japan - and finished on the podium no fewer than four times.

What’s more, both Barrichello and Vettel have found an ever-enlarging fan base, Barrichello because of his general likeable character and an uncanny resemblance to the game-character 'Mario', and Vettel because of the youthful exuberance that saw him displace Fernando Alonso as the youngest winner of a Grand Prix when he won in Italy in 2008.

Fans like these two. They ignite their passion and imagination and remind them of what a sporting hero should be all about. 

Fans don’t like to see winners winning because of a technical advantage early on in the season and then coasting their way through once they join the rank and file.

That’s not winning. That’s just playing' ugly'.

The reality of Button winning the Drivers' Championship this season is almost certain. Both Rubens and Vettel need to pull of miracle drives and hope that some minor disaster unhinges Button before there can be any contemplation of a reversal of the leader board. 

Not that it hasn’t happened before. Two seasons ago, the feud between leaders Lewis Hamilton and Alonso, both in McLarens. allowed Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen to overturn a seven-point deficit in the last race to claim the title.

Last season, Hamilton’s decision to play it safe almost saw him handing the title to Ferrari’s Philippe Massa. This season, all neutrals will want to see a similar calamity strike at Button in the upcoming race in Brazil. 

Fans demand for such so that both Rubens and Vettel will be in the reckoning come the season ending Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi. 

For it cannot be that F1 fans, all used to the beauty of their heroes and the glamour that is associated with the sport, will for season 2009 have to suffer an 'ugly' winner.