It’s Lendl Who Gets Worn Out : Tennis: Former No. 1 player retires because of lingering back injury at 34. He won almost everything but Wimbledon.

Ivan Lendl, the dour Czech-born tennis star who won 94 tournaments, eight Grand Slam event titles and more than $20 million in prize money--but never won Wimbledon--announced his retirement Tuesday at 34 because of a lingering back injury.

Lendl held the No. 1 ranking for a record 270 weeks, but he fell out of the top 10 last year for the first time since he turned pro in 1978. At the U.S. Open last fall, Lendl had to quit during a second-round match because of his back and hinted afterward that retirement was not out of the question.

He made it official in a conference call to reporters.

“It is never easy,” Lendl said of his decision. “I enjoyed playing the game, had a lot of great times, and I will miss it.”

Lendl leaves behind a legacy as one of the game’s greatest baseline players whose game was flawed by a numbingly repetitive ground-stroke style. He also showed a grating personality that drew few fans his way.

“I don’t think he gave much of himself to the public,” tennis great Jack Kramer said. “He didn’t look like he was enjoying himself too much. Somehow or other, he was brought up not to care about anything except the next ball coming his way. He was a sourpuss.”

The only man in tennis to have played in 19 Grand Slam event finals, Lendl reached eight consecutive U.S. Open finals from 1982-1989 and won three. So at home was he on the hard court at Flushing Meadow, he built an identical Decoturf II court in his back yard in Connecticut.

Lendl was the dominant force of men’s tennis from 1984-89, turning his career around after losing to Jimmy Connors in the 1983 U.S. Open final in four sets, when he failed to win a game in the final set.

It was Lendl’s fourth appearance in a Grand Slam event final and his fourth defeat. But Lendl erased his image as a choker in the 1984 French Open final against his nemesis, John McEnroe. Lendl lost the first two sets on the red clay of Roland Garros, then won the next three for a 3-6, 2-6, 6-4, 7-5, 7-5 comeback victory.

In his next 18 Grand Slam appearances, Lendl won seven more titles and made the final in six others.

But he never conquered Wimbledon. He tried and failed 14 times. He came close twice, but had the misfortune of running into 18-year-old Boris Becker in the 1986 final and meteoric Pat Cash in the 1987 final. Lendl skipped Wimbledon this year to receive treatment for his back injury.

The last match Lendl played at Wimbledon was in 1993 when he lost in the second round in straight sets, his earliest exit in 12 years.

Lendl’s normal style was not serve and volley, but he tried for years, in vain, to play a grass court style at Wimbledon. Kramer said that was a mistake, considering that other baseline players such as Bjorn Borg and Andre Agassi stayed back and still were able to win on grass.

“I think the tragedy of his career is that he tried to change his game to try to win Wimbledon,” Kramer said. “He really suffered from the notion that he wasn’t an all-court player and tried to change that by winning at Wimbledon.

“He was lucky to have a great serve, but he didn’t know how to back it up,” Kramer said.

In his prime, Lendl overpowered his opponents with his forehand and an approach to a match that he was prepared to slug for as long as it took, even if it was the next day.

Connors said Lendl’s conditioning was instrumental in his success. “His ability to wear guys down was pretty strong,” he said. “It’s too bad he can’t leave on his own terms.”

Lendl won his eighth and last Grand Slam event in the 1990 Australian Open, when he scored a straight-set victory over Miloslav Mecir, another Czech who was forced to retire two years later because of a back injury.

Lendl became a U.S. citizen in 1992.

An only child, Lendl was born in the coal-mining city of Ostrava in the former Czechoslovakia, near the Polish border. Ostrava is sometimes called “the black city” because of the soot spewed by smokestacks.

Lendl’s father, Jiri, was once ranked among the top tennis players in the country. Olga Jenistova Lendlova, Lendl’s mother, was once ranked No. 2 in the former Czechoslovakia.

At 4, Lendl was hitting tennis balls against a wall with a wooden paddle. If he could not find someone to play against, he went back to the wall, which he said he didn’t like to do.

“I couldn’t beat the wall,” Lendl once said.

Many of his opponents felt that way about him.