Mark Hodgkinson - Ivan Lendl- the Man Who Made Murray

THE MAN WHO MADE MURRAY

MARK HODGKINSON

First published in 2014

by Aurum Press Ltd, 7477 White Lion Street, London N1 9PF

www.aurumpress.co.uk

This eBook edition first published in 2014

Copyright Mark Hodgkinson 2014

Mark Hodgkinson has asserted his moral right to be identified as the Author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Digital edition: 978-1-78131-311-4
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For Amy, Molly and Rosie

O thers invented the tie-break, the titanium racket and the Hawk-Eye line-calling technology; Ivan Lendl created the Fuck You Forehand. He would happily smash a tennis ball into your face. Among Lendls legacies to the sport, this is where tennis crosses over into psychological violence; he would be looking to leave psychic bruises as well as raspberry-coloured welts on your skin. Jimmy Connors gave you the finger and John McEnroe had his foaming furies; Lendl launched the ball at your head, and started a revolution.

If you watch tennis now, everyone is doing it, but Ivan was the first, Mats Wilander, who contested five grand slam finals against Lendl, told me. Ivan would come at you, hitting the ball so hard that you couldnt get out of the way, and, in those days, when he was the first to use that tactic, that wasnt seen as being very sporting. We would all be thinking, Oh, Ivan, thats a bit strange. Ivan was a pioneer in other ways, like the way he worked out, and the way he prepared for matches, but he was also a pioneer in the way he hit people. Several tennis generations later, just a few days out from the 2013 Wimbledon Championships, and during a charity doubles match opposite Andy Murray at Londons Queens Club it became clear just how Lendls invention had been turned against him. This was the most violent of Sunday afternoons in West Kensington: after all those years of unloading forehands at others, now Lendl was the one experiencing the sting of a tennis ball exploding on his flesh, and it was Murray who had thrashed hard in his direction.

On the Cold War-era tennis tour, there were no disarmament conferences or marches, nothing that Lendls rivals could do to nullify the destructive, atomic power of his forehand. It was tenniss first great forehand, a shot struck with such force that the watching Arthur Ashe believed that Lendl was deforming tennis balls, the late American novelist David Foster Wallace thought that the man from the East was playing a kind of brutal art, and Lendl himself was publishing instructional books with titles such as Hitting Hot and Power Tennis. You wouldnt buy those to add subtlety to your game. Lendls forehand was terrifying enough when he was ripping the ball through the court for winners, with the felt-covered missiles bouncing and then thudding into the backstop; there was a whole new level of brutality and terror when Lendl aimed at his opponent, pressing fire on one of those head-seeking, hellfire forehands. Here was a shot designed to cause maximum damage to your opponents mental wellbeing; clobber someone with a forehand and youre telling him, as well as all those watching, whos alpha and whos beta.

Just look at what Lendl started. Before Lendl, tennis wasnt a contact sport; its ethos was still that of the country club and not far off that of the vicarage lawn. In todays tennis-speak, or language of the locker-room, these deliberate and provocative acts are known as tagging, tubing or drillingyoure clumping the ball with all the power your racket arm can generate, and youre hoping, where possible, to take your opponents head off. And youre not going to apologise. You certainly never whisper a sorry or raise a hand in silent apology after striking your opponentyou could, as Lendl did once after knocking McEnroe to the ground, just spin around and prepare for the next point, not bothering to look back at your battered, floored opponent. Remorse was for wimps. To apologise would have been to lose much of the impact of assaulting your opponent in the first place.

Theres only one problem with this analysis, with this idea that Lendl was looking to use a direct hit to gain a psychological edge over his adversary, and thats that its simply not based in reality. As we shall discover, over the years a mythology has built up around many parts of Lendls tennis life, and one of the many Lendl myths concerns those forehand zingers. And Lendl hadnt always worked hard to correct the myths that suited his cause. If everyone had come to believe that Lendl was using his racket to blast holes in an opponents psyche, if they imagined he was so determined to win tennis matches that he would behave like that, well, he wasnt going to tell them any differently. As one former player who was on the tour with Lendl said to me, the Czech-born player was hardly going to mind a reputation for psychological violence that helped to strengthen his locker-room aura, so why bother addressing this untruth about himself? And, thirty years on from Lendl winning his first slamat Roland Garros in the spring of 1984its a character trait that people keep returning to and glorifying, just like his supposed inability to smile, which is another of the great Lendl myths.

Its undeniably true that Lendl was the first to regularly take deliberate aim at the poor saps opposite him. And he did so on the practice court as well as in the stadium. Almost everyone from the 1980s that Murray had spoken to about his former coach has an anecdote about being stung by Lendls bomb of a forehand. Lendl became known for it. Playing a duff shot against Lendl, and then standing there at the net believing that he wouldnt be gunning for your forehead, was an idiocy; you had effectively turned yourself into a firing-range silhouette dressed up in tennis togs. You should have known better than to do that; in all likelihood, you were going to end up with the ball manufacturers logo imprinted on your skin.

So Lendl hadnt done much to correct this myth. But the sense is that Lendl believes that others, and the soft-headed media especially, sometimes made too much of a big deal about when his forehand connected with an opponents face or upper body. However, that wouldnt be the first or last time that he thought that commentators had psychoanalysed something to death. The truth appears to be that Lendl hit this shot because of practical, rather than psychological, considerations. And thats a view supported by comments he made in his book Power Tennis, which was published in the 1980sif his opponent was at the net, it was often the right play. In the early years of his career, Lendl felt as though he was losing too many close-range exchangesessentially, those points would come down to guesses, with the opponent having to decide whether Lendl was going to go for a passing shot down the line or cross-court. If the opponent made a correct guess, Lendl would generally lose the point. Okay, you could play a lob, but what if your opponent was responding well to those, too? What were your options? A practical solution, and it was one he found by accident on the day he mistimed a forehand which ended up going down the middle of the court, was to whack the ball directly at his opponentif he was able to put enough oomph into the shot, it was more than likely he would come off best. And winning the point was what mattered. Nailing McEnroe, or a missile at Vitas Gerulaitis foreheadthose are the two most celebrated occasions he went after his opponentwould have counted for nothing if he hadnt won the points.