Try to Knock Your Socks Off Today, Ivan

Psst, Ivan Lendl. I’ve got some advice for you. Forget your socks today. Your tennis socks. Leave them at home, accidentally.

Show up sockless for your Wimbledon championship match with Pat Cash. Have your hair uncombed and leave some breakfast food on your tennis shirt, like you were behind schedule and had to rush out of your room in a panic.

That’s how the rest of us start our day. Show the fans you’re human. I know you’ve got this image problem; people picture you as a cold, ultra-disciplined tennis robot.

I haven’t seen that. You’ve been a peach in press conferences the last two weeks, joking around and trying to be friendly and cooperative.

Martina Navratilova says about you: “He’s probably the brightest player out there, as well as the most polite, easy-going person. He just demands perfection. For some reason it scares people, perhaps because they’re not capable of it themselves.”

I don’t expect you to turn yourself into a lazy slob for PR purposes, Ivan, but maybe you could loosen up a little. That bit on the court the other day was nice, where you almost beaned a net judge and then kidded him about it. That’s the idea. Let us see that fun-guy side more often.

The tennis world is incredibly probing, gossipy and judgmental, and you’ve been saddled with a bad label. You arrive at Wimbledon on a rainy day, and some guy in the Times of London writes, “It was an Ivan Lendl day at Wimbledon--dark, brooding, miserable, joyless.”

Welcome to jolly olde England, eh?

The guy also wrote: “If he ever does win it (Wimbledon), he will surely be the most unpopular winner in the history of the tournament.”

You shrugged it off and tried hard. During the siege of rain, you said of the fans who got soaked, “I really felt sorry for them.” Most athletes wouldn’t blink if fans got washed away in a flash flood.

You’ve been funny, like when you almost lost in an early round and said: “I was five points away from the Concorde.”

You’ve poured your heart out, saying how tough it’s been for you to learn to play on grass, how frustrating.

Still, there is a resentment toward you because you keep your emotions so well in check on the court. After you blew up at the chair umpire in your match with Henri Leconte, you said of your emotions: “I try to restrain them, because if I let them run, I’ll run myself down. I can let out as much as I feel is proper at the time.”

Look, I can’t explain why more people don’t warm to you. Pat Cash has this image of being a hip and likable lady-killer, yet in interviews he comes off as arrogant, at best.

To one innocuous question, Cash shot back: “I know what you want me to say and I’m not going to say it.”

Funny, that’s exactly what I wanted him to say.

I hear you hired a PR man to improve your image. Fire him. There’s nothing worse for your image than having to hire a PR man to fix it.

Just worry about tennis, at least today. You’re playing great, a very controlled and powerful game right now, and you’ll need it. Cash is probably the most deadly net shark in tennis, and he loves grass. He’s ranked 13th in the world, and he’s an athlete. He beat you in the Australian Open, but you beat him the previous four times you met.

He’ll be sort of a sentimental favorite today, because he lives in London. And the Aussies are pulling hard for him to be the first Australian to win here since John Newcombe in ’71.

You’ve got age (27, to Cash’s 22) and Wimbledon experience on your side. You lost here in the championship match last year, to Boris Becker.

Cash has a dashing sort of game, and gimmicks like the headband and the earring. Maybe the fans will be making noise for him, but maybe you have a lot of fans, too, and they’re quiet, like you.

If you win, the fans will come around. They’ll appreciate your greatness. So, don’t change your style of play. Just leave your socks home.