The first in a series this week on the players and themes to watch in the new tennis year.
What was your first reaction when you heard that Andy Murray had hired Ivan Lendl to be his coach in 2012? Mine went something like this: “Huh?” I didn’t see any possible connection between the two, in their personalities, their games, or their backgrounds. It was hard to imagine Lendl’s thin-skinned sarcasm meshing with Murray’s unsmiling willfulness.
What was your second thought about these two? Mine went, roughly, like this: “Well . . . maybe?” As Murray said in announcing the hire, Lendl also spent a considerable amount of time early in his career as the proverbial BPNTWAM—best player never to win a major. In fact, he was even better at it than Murray: The Scot is 0-3 in Slam finals; it took Lendl five tries before he finally broke through. “He has been through a lot of the same things I have been through,” Murray said of Lendl, “so I’m sure he can help me mentally with things.”
OK, there’s one connection. Lendl really does know how to go from gagging, and even tanking, in Slam finals to triumphing in them. We usually say that great players can’t coach because they never thought much about what they were doing. The prime example of this was Rod Laver’s alleged all-purpose advice to his students: “Just give it a nudge,” he would tell them, as if that was all it took to win two calendar-year Slams. That story is at least partly apocryphal, but it makes a valid point: The best coaches have been the guys to whom it didn’t all come naturally. Tony Roche, not Laver, was Lendl’s mentor, and Brad Gilbert and Darren Cahill, rather than John McEnroe, have been the most famous coaches of their day. But while Lendl is a playing legend, it didn’t all come naturally to him, the way it did for McEnroe. Lendl had to methodically improve his serve and his backhand; he had to do aerobics at 6:00 A.M. to get in shape and get an edge; he had to work to shed his early image as a choker and a tanker. Lendl, with Roche’s help, taught himself to win at the highest level as he went along.
Can he teach someone else to do the same thing? Murray says he liked Lendl’s honesty about his game when they met (I wonder what Ivan said: "Stop the damn screaming, kid"?), and there’s no question that Lendl won’t be afraid to say what he thinks. The question is: Will Murray listen? He tried the tough love route with Gilbert, and while it was effective in the short term, it wasn’t a good match in the end. I watched more than one practice session of theirs wrap up with Murray muttering to himself and Gilbert shaking his head in exasperation. After they split, Murray went in the opposite direction, surrounding himself with friendlier faces. That seemed to be the natural move for the anti-authoritarian Scot.
But there are things that he can learn from Lendl. Murray’s biggest technical weakness is his lack of a killer forehand; Lendl virtually invented that shot. If he can’t teach him a new grip or a new swing, he can teach him a new mindset. Murray has proven that he can win by dictating from the forehand side (see the first set of his Wimbledon semifinal against Rafael Nadal last year), but he’s never felt comfortable with that kind of risky, assertive, strike-first style (see the next three sets of his Wimbledon semifinal against Rafael Nadal last year). Lendl, unlike Murray, knew that weapons were the surest way to win Slams.
Still, Lendl is only going to be able to do so much, from a nitty-gritty standpoint, with a six-year tour veteran like Murray. In that sense, this hire reminds me of Andy Roddick bringing on Jimmy Connors in 2006. Like Murray, Roddick was 24 then, and he had become a perpetual second-fiddle to Roger Federer. He needed a boost in confidence, and more important, in his expectations for himself, and that’s what he got from Jimbo. The positive results were immediate, as Roddick reached the U.S. Open final and gave Federer a strong four-set challenge. Connors never got Roddick back into the Grand Slam winner’s circle, but having him in his box and on the practice court helped. Connors, even when the opponent was Federer, wasn’t in the habit of accepting defeats to anyone.
