Ivan Lendl (born March 7, 1960) is a former World No. 1 American professional tennis player of Czech origin. He was one of the game's most dominant players in the 1980s and remained a top competitor into the early 1990s. 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 male tennis players for the period from 1946 through 1992. Ivan Lendl captured eight Grand Slam singles titles during his career. He competed in a total of 19 Grand Slam singles finals, a record for a male player. He reached at least one Grand Slam final for 11 consecutive years, an all-time record since tied by Pete Sampras. Lendl first attained the World No. 1 ranking on the men's professional tour on February 28, 1983, bolstering his claim to the top spot when he defeated John McEnroe in the 1985 U.S. Open final. For much of the next five years, Ivan Lendl was the top ranked player until August 1990 (with a short 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 (1985-87 and 1989) and was ranked World No. 1 for a total of 270 weeks, breaking the record previously held by Jimmy Connors (this has since been surpassed by Pete Sampras). 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 called his game as "hitting hot", a relentless all-court game that was coming to dominate in tennis.
Ivan Lendl was born into a tennis family in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic). His parents were top players in Czechoslovakia. (His mother Olga was at one point ranked the No. 2 woman player in the country). Lendl turned professional in tennis in 1978. He started to live in the United States in 1981, first at the home of mentor and friend Wojtek Fibak; later, in 1984, Lendl bought his own residence in Greenwich, Connecticut. Ivan applied for and received a U.S. Permanent Resident Card (also known as a Green Card) in 1987 and wanted to get U.S. citizenship as soon as possible to represent the USA in the 1988 Olympic Games and in Davis Cup. A bill in Congress to bypass the traditional five-year waiting procedure was rejected in 1988 because Czechoslovak authorities refused to provide the necessary waivers. He became a U.S. citizen on July 7, 1992. On September 16th, 1989, six days after losing the final of the U.S. Open to Boris Becker, he married Samantha Frankel. They have five daughters - Marika (born May 4, 1990), twins Isabelle and Caroline (born July 29, 1991), Daniela (born June, 24 1993) and Nikola (born January 20, 1998). He transferred his competitive interests to professional golf where he captured a win on the Celebrity Tour. Still competitive at the mini-tour levels, Lendl now devotes much of his time managing the development of his daughters' golfing abilities. Three of his daughters (Marika, Isabelle and Daniela) play golf at U.S. Girls Juniors level. His other two daughters (Caroline and Nikola) enjoy eventing horses. In July 1983, Ivan Lendl played three exhibition matches (against Johan Kriek, Kevin Curren and Jimmy Connors) in Sun City, in the apartheid-era bantustan of Bophuthatswana. The Czechoslovak Sport Federation (ČSTV) controlled by the Communist Party expelled him from the Czechoslovak Davis Cup team, fined him $150,000 and publicly threatened to prohibit him from traveling abroad for future tournaments. Ivan Lendl disagreed with the punishment and fine. He has not travelled to his native country since being there for the last time for the Davis Cup in March 1982. In addition, the publication of his name and results in the Czechoslovak media was prohibited. The ban was extended not only to Ivan Lendl, but to anything about world tennis, all tennis tournaments, and both men's and women's circuits (with the exception of blank Grand Slam results without any comments). World tennis disappeared from the censored Czechoslovak media on August 16, 1983 when this "secret embargo" came into effect. The appearance in this exhibition in Sun City and Lendl's americanized living style ignited a long-lasting dispute between Ivan Lendl and Czechoslovak authorities, which was never settled and resulted in Ivan's decision to apply for a Green Card in 1987 and later on for U.S. citizenship. Style of play Ivan Lendl was, along with Bjorn Borg, an early proponent of the Western forehand grip. His trademark shot was perhaps his running forehand which he could direct either down the baseline or cross-court. Early in his career Lendl played a sliced backhand but in the early 1980s learned to hit his backhand Western style. This shift allowed him in 1984 to defeat John McEnroe in the French Open - his first Grand Slam victory. Careful scrutiny of this French Open final shows McEnroe using his habitual proximity to the net to easily intercept Lendl's cross-court passing shots in the first two sets. Ivan Lendl changed his tactics in the third set and starting using lobs. This forced McEnroe to distance himself from the net in order to anticipate the lobs. McEnroe's new position at the net opened the angles for Lendl's cross-court passing shots, which ultimately gained him points and turned the match around. Lendl's serve was extremely powerful but inconsistent. His very high toss may be to blame. Ivan Lendl was the first of a new breed of power baseliners, and his consistency from the baseline was machine-like. Though tall and apparently gangly, Ivan Lendl was very fast on the court. Lendl did not win Wimbledon because he could not sufficiently improve his comfort level at the net. Grass courts yield notoriously bad bounces, and that destablized his phenomenal baseline game more than other baseliners. His groundstroke setup was very complete, and repeated bad bounces made him uncomfortable. Wimbledon in that day required reducing baseline play by coming to net. He devoted considerable effort to significantly improving his net play, but fell short of a Wimbledon title. Toward the end of his days on the ATP tour Ivan Lendl ended his long term clothing, shoe and racket deal with adidas. He signed with Mizzuno, and finally began to play with a mid sized racquet very similar to the Adidas racket he had used through out most of his career.
Ivan Lendl first came to the tennis world's attention as an outstanding junior player. In 1978, he won the boy's 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. In 1982, he won in total 15 of the 23 singles tournaments he entered and had a 44-match winning streak. He competed on separated WCT tour where he won all 10 WCT tournaments he signed-in. In an era when tournament prize money was rising sharply due to competition of 2 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. But Grand Slam titles eluded Ivan 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 Bjorn Borg. His second came at the U.S. Open in 1982, where he was defeated by Jimmy Connors. In 1983, he was the runner-up at both the Australian Open and the U.S. Open. Lendl's first Grand Slam title came at the 1984 French Open, where he defeated John McEnroe in a long final to claim what was arguably his most memorable victory. Down two sets to none and later trailing 4–2 in the fourth set, Ivan Lendl battled back to claim the title 3–6, 2–6, 6–4, 7–5, 7–5. McEnroe gained revenge by beating Lendl in straight sets in both finals of the U.S. Open 1984 and Volvo Masters 1984 (played in January 1985). 1985 was arguably Lendl's best year on the tour as he captured 11 singles crowns in 17 tournament appearances. Lendl lost in the final of the 1985 French Open to Mats Wilander. He then faced John McEnroeagain in the final of the U.S. Open, and this time it was Lendl who emerged victorious in a straight sets win. It was the first of three consecutive U.S. Open titles for Ivan Lendl and part of a run of eight consecutive U.S. Open finals. In 1986 and 1987 he added wins in the French Open to his U.S Open victories. During each of the years from 1985 through 1987, Lendl's match winning percentage was greater than 90%. This record was equalled by Roger Federer in 2006. Ivan, however, remains the only male with at least 90% match wins in four different years (1982 was the first). From the 1985 U.S. Open through the 1988 Australian Open, Ivan Lendl reached ten consecutive Grand Slam singles semifinals -- a record that was broken by Federer at the 2006 US Open. 1989 was another very strong year for Lendl. He started the year by capturing his first Australian Open title with a straight sets final victory over Miloslav Mecir and went on to claim 10 titles out of 17 tournaments he entered. Lendl successfully defended his Australian Open title in 1990. The only Grand Slam singles title Ivan Lendl never managed to win was Wimbledon. After reaching the semifinals in 1983 and 1984, he reached the final there twice, losing in straight sets to Boris Becker in 1986 and Pat Cash in 1987. (One newspaper sports section headline read: Czech Versus Cash !). In the years that followed, Lendl put in intensive efforts to train and hone his game on grass courts. But despite reaching the Wimbledon semifinals again in 1988, 1989 and 1990, he never again reached the final. Lendl was part of the team that won Czechoslovakia's only Davis Cup title in 1980. He was the driving force behind the country's team in the first half of the 1980s but stopped playing in the event after he moved to the United States in 1986 because, in the eyes of communist Czechoslovakia's Tennis Association, he was an "illegal defector" from their country. Ivan Lendl was also part of the Czechoslovakian team that won the World Team Cup in 1981 and was runner-up in 1984 and 1985. Lendl won the tour's year-end Masters championships five times in 1981-82 and 1985-87. Lendl's success in the game had a lot to do with his highly meticulous and intensive training and physical conditioning regime, his scientific approach to preparing for and playing the game, and a strong desire to put in whatever it took to be successful. It is believed that a contributing factor to his run of eight successive U.S. Open finals and long record of success at that tournament was that he hired the same workers who laid the hardcourt surfaces at Flushing Meadows each year to install an exact copy in the grounds of his home in Greenwich, Connecticut. Ivan Lendl announced his retirement from professional tennis on December 21, 1994, due to chronic back pain. Although he didn't play an official match since his loss in the 2nd round of the US Open in 1994, he made a final decision to retire three and a half months later. It is an irony that the man who made such a religion of physical fitness had to close the career due to the health problems. Lendl won a total of 94 career singles titles listed by the ATP (plus 49 other non-ATP tournaments thus making a total of 144 singles titles) and 6 doubles titles, and his career prize money of U.S. $21,262,417 was a record at the time. In 2001, he was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. After finishing his tennis career, Lendl has taken up golf, earning a handicap of 0 and organizing a charity competition in 2004 called the "Ivan Lendl Celebrity Golf Tournament". Lendl's professional attitude, modern playing style, scientific training methods, and unprecedented long-term success have had a considerable impact on today's tennis world. A typical Lendl quote is: "If I don't practice the way I should, then I won't play the way that I know I can." Career achievements
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