Ivan Lendl

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Ivan Lendl bigraphy, stories - professional tennis player

Ivan Lendl : biography

06 March 1960 –

Ivan Lendl (born March 7, 1960, Czechoslovakia) is a former world no.1 professional tennis player. Originally from Czechoslovakia, he became a United States citizen in 1992. He was one of the game’s most dominant players in the 1980s and remained a top competitor into the early 1990s. He has been described as one of the greatest tennis players of all time. Lendl’s game relied particularly on strength and heavy topspin from the baseline and helped usher in the modern era of "power tennis". He himself described his game as "hitting hot", a relentless all-court game that was coming to dominate in tennis.

Lendl captured eight Grand Slam singles titles. He competed in 19 Grand Slam singles finals, a record surpassed by Roger Federer in 2009. He reached at least one Grand Slam final for 11 consecutive years, a record shared with Pete Sampras, with the male primacy of eight consecutive finals in a Grand Slam tournament (a record shared with Bill Tilden at the US Open). Before the formation of the ATP, Lendl reached a record 12 year-end championships (equalled by John McEnroe). He won two WCT Finals titles and five Masters Grand Prix titles, with the record of nine consecutive finals. He also won a record 22 Championship Series titles (1980–89), the precursors to the current ATP Masters 1000.

Lendl first attained the world no. 1 ranking on February 28, 1983 and bolstered his claim to the top spot when he defeated John McEnroe in the 1984 French Open final. For much of the next five years, Lendl was the top-ranked player, until August 1990 (with a break from September 1988 to January 1989 when Mats Wilander was at the top). He finished four years ranked as the world’s top player (1985–1987 and 1989) and was ranked no. 1 for a total of 270 weeks and set a new record previously held by Jimmy Connors, since broken by Pete Sampras and Roger Federer. Starting in 2012, he became Andy Murray’s coach.

Notes

Recognition

  • Tennis magazine named him as one of the ten greatest tennis players since 1966, calling him "the game’s greatest overachiever" and emphasizing his importance in the game’s history. In his book Modern Encyclopedia of Tennis, Bud Collins included Lendl in his list of the 21 greatest men’s tennis players for the period from 1946 through 1992.
  • In July 1986 DPR Korea issued a postage stamp depicting Ivan Lendl in play. – photo of this postage stamp

Professional Awards

  • ITF World Champion: 1985, 1986,1987, 1990.
  • ATP Player of The Year: 1985, 1986, 1987.
  • ATP Most Improved Player: 1981.

Tennis career

Lendl first came to the tennis world’s attention as an outstanding junior player. In 1978, he won the boys’ singles titles at both the French Open and Wimbledon and was ranked the world no. 1 junior player.

Lendl made an almost immediate impact on the game after turning professional. After reaching his first top-level singles final in 1979, he won seven singles titles in 1980, including three tournament wins in three consecutive weeks on three different surfaces. The success continued in 1981, as he won 10 titles, including his first season-ending Masters Grand Prix tour title, defeating Vitas Gerulaitis in five sets.

In 1982, he won 15 of the 23 singles tournaments he entered and had a 44-match winning streak.

He competed on the separate World Championship Tennis (WCT) tour, where he won all 10 WCT tournaments he entered, including winning his first WCT Finals, where he defeated John McEnroe in straight sets. He met McEnroe again in the Masters Grand Prix final and won in straight sets to claim his second season-ending championship of that particular tour.

In an era when tournament prize money was rising sharply due to the competition between two circuits (Grand Prix and WCT), Lendl’s haul of titles quickly made him the highest-earning tennis player of all time.

He won another seven tournaments in 1983.

However, Grand Slam titles eluded Lendl in the early years of his career. He reached his first Grand Slam final at the French Open in 1981, where he lost in five sets to Björn Borg. His second came at the US Open in 1982, where he was defeated by Jimmy Connors. In 1983, he was the runner-up at both the Australian Open and the US Open.