COMMENTARY : Picking on Lendl’s Faults Easier Than Praising Greatness

For years, people called him EYE-vin, even as he kept telling them his name was pronounced e-VON. But he played like an EYE-vin, so terribly hard and unrelenting, always grimacing, never like a graceful, feathery e-VON.

The words flair and Ivan Lendl have rarely appeared in the same sentence, which probably tops the list of reasons Lendl, who retired from tennis Tuesday because of a chronic back problem, never got the credit he deserved. His robotic style won him many matches but few hearts, especially in the late 1980s, when he was No. 1 in the world and mechanically dismantling American icons John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors.

Tennis commentator Bud Collins delighted in calling him “the Ostrava Ghost,” Ostrava being the dreary industrial town in Czechoslovakia where Lendl grew up, ghost a reasonably apt description of Lendl’s sunken eyes, concave cheeks and pale, unsmiling countenance. If Lendl had a theme song, it surely wasn’t “Ain’t We Got Fun.”

We first met Lendl more than a decade ago, at a tournament in Palm Springs, Calif., when he was then represented by Jerry Solomon, now infamous as Nancy Kerrigan’s main squeeze. As you might expect of someone raised in an Iron Curtain country, the squirming, staccato-speaking Lendl was suspicious of anyone pumping him for information, no matter how seemingly harmless.

Even in later years, as his rapier sense of humor and near-flawless English bespoke his obvious intelligence, Lendl turned aside questions plumbing his emotional depths. He had his millions and his family and he wasn’t about to open a vein in an attempt to win over an America that had long since succumbed to stereotyping him.

Free at last, he lived behind Connecticut fortress walls as an American citizen. A colossal capitalist, he battled behind the scenes with McEnroe, who, for the good of the game, wanted more prize money distributed to the comparatively poorly paid doubles players. Lendl opposed any siphoning from singles.

“How much money,” asked an exasperated McEnroe, himself a multimillionaire, “does a guy need?”

Lendl, 34, won more than $20 million in tournament prize money, but he never won tennis’ greatest tournament, Wimbledon. He was a finalist twice, losing to Boris Becker in 1986 and Pat Cash in 1987. Although he was No. 1 longer (270 weeks) than any man and won more titles and matches than any man except Connors, it is the lack of a Wimbledon title that will forever relegate Lendl to a notch barely below the supreme champions.

Lendl’s great endurance and ground strokes showed themselves best on slower surfaces like clay, where he won three French Opens, and the asphalt-like DecoTurf II at the U.S. Open, where he won three consecutive titles (1985-87) and was a finalist eight years in a row (1982-89).

Although Lendl then lived in nearby Greenwich, he had a court identical to that of the Open stadium court built in his own back yard. He was that kind of perfectionist.

But the superior serve-and-volley game that grass and Wimbledon invariably favor (Bjorn Borg’s five titles there being a notable exception) was never Lendl’s strength. His conditioning and work ethic won him enduring respect, but never tennis’ greatest prize.

But while Lendl lacked a Wimbledon champion’s athleticism, he was not without a tennis pedigree. His father, an attorney, once ranked as high as No. 15 in Czechoslovakia, his mother No. 3. When Ivan was a toddler, she leashed him to a netpost while she practiced. Tennis, he played for money. Golf, he plays for enjoyment.

The world is very different from what it was in 1980, when Lendl first cracked tennis’ Top 10. Ronald Reagan was becoming president, depicting the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire. To many Americans, the shadowy-looking Lendl was just another Eastern European to goof on. Connors, who always knew how to work a crowd, led the goof, calling him EYE-vin.

Nobody calls him EYE-vin anymore. Nobody goofs on a man who played in a record 19 Grand Slam finals. Unless, of course, they’re pointing out that his record in them is 8-11.

The problem for those who threaten to enter the pantheon of greatness is that we spend more time pointing out what they’re not than praising what they are. If Ivan Lendl can make his peace with that, that will be his greatest triumph.