Lendl Sums Up Loss to Leconte: ‘Against Me, He Forgets to Miss’

Ivan Lendl’s life-long battle with Ivan Lendl was fought anew on Centre Court here Tuesday. And Lendl lost another one.

No one has ever questioned Lendl’s talents. But his head, his heart. . . .

On Tuesday, this man with such marvelous skills was truly Ivan the Terrible.

He can beat McEnroe. He can beat anyone when his game is together and his head is together and the tournament isn’t Wimbledon and the opponent isn’t Henri Leconte.

Leconte is a dashing young Frenchman with that certain French style and a certain joie de vivre . Occasionally, he also plays tennis. And at no time does he more enjoy the game than when Lendl stands on the other side of the net.

“When you get him in his game, he gets tight and nervous,” said Leconte, who has beaten Lendl in three consecutive matches and five of eight. “Especially when I get an important point.”

Lendl gets nervous. He says so. And he knows that Leconte has no fear of him.

“He is confident against me,” Lendl said. “When I see him playing other players, he seems to miss a lot. Against me, he forgets to miss.”

In the fourth and final set, Leconte was whacking away at Lendl’s serve, crushing winner after winner. And slowly, surely, Lendl simply disintegrated.

The last two points of Lendl’s Wimbledon were almost too painful to watch.

Leconte served, and Lendl just hit an easy pop fly. Leconte served and volleyed, and Lendl watched as the drop shot fell in front of him. He didn’t look the champion he had hoped to be.

“When another player gets ahead of me, I start searching for what I’m doing wrong,” Lendl said. “If I’m able to come up with something, it’s fine. If I’m not, I just don’t enjoy that part of the game. I get a little confused what to do.”

He looked confused, in doubt. He looked a beaten man.

Leconte had prevailed, 3-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-1. Leconte was going to the quarterfinals, and Lendl was going someplace where he could think things over.

He’s the No. 2 player in the world. He has beaten John McEnroe twice this year and seemed to be closing the gap in his bid for the top. McEnroe had said as much himself.

But Lendl is chasing more than McEnroe. At Wimbledon, Lendl has only once made it as far as the quarterfinal round. In five years at or near the top of men’s tennis, Lendl has won but one Grand Slam title.

And the question is being raised again: Why doesn’t he win the big ones?

He had no answer, and so he becomes another year’s story. Meanwhile, there is Leconte. And there is Boris Becker, the 17-year-old German sensation. Becker beat Tim Mayotte, 6-3, 4-6, 6-7, 7-6, 6-2, in a five-set thriller that had the normally subdued Wimbledon crowds in an uproar.

Between points, the fans would actually yell Boris’ name. The umpire, of course, would ask for silence. A little decorum, please.

What chance of decorum with Becker and Leconte about? Becker, who plays tennis with the verve of Pete Rose, was diving for yet another ball when he twisted his ankle late in the fourth set. A doctor had to be called, and Becker had to wonder if he had damaged the same tendons he injured here a year ago.

But he walked off the injury and marched right past Mayotte into a quarterfinal meeting with Leconte.

The Frenchman beats players like Lendl and, say, Bjorn Borg--he beat Borg twice--but he can lose to anyone. He turns 22 Thursday and people are still waiting for him to turn into a star, but the French love him. They love his style, his grace on the court, his quickness afoot, his Frenchness.

A year ago, he got married, and Leconte says that life is different now.

“I am different,” he said. “Getting married has helped my game from a mental point of view. Before, I was not consistent.

“My wife cheers me on. She says things like, ‘Go for it, you are the best, you can beat anyone.’ ”

Maybe she even keeps him home. Leconte, to hear the talk, was once the playboy of the Western world.

In the French Open, he made it to the quarterfinals after beating countryman Yannick Noah in an emotional fourth-round, five-set match that had the Parisians undecided as to whom they loved more.

Ask him why he beats Lendl, and you’ll love the answer.

“Because I play so well.”

And a Becker-Leconte match?

“It should be a good match because he plays well, and I play well.”

And the winner might just go all the way to the final round Sunday. The crowd will be for Becker, who is the first 17-year-old since Borg in 1973 to make it to the quarterfinals.

“Age is not a factor,” Becker said. Who will doubt him?

Confidence might be, and both players are at the top of their games. Lendl, on the other hand, had it all together until he got to the All England Club grass.

In his first match, he played in the rain while everyone else took the day off. It was a bad start to a bad tournament in which Lendl struggled every day.

He had brought in Tony Roche, the former Australian star, to help him with his game on grass. But even with Roche at his side, Lendl seemed to be pressing.

“It’s back to work,” he said. And it’s back to looking for answers.