But to be fair, if you take players from my era to now, the game has changed and the players have many more shots. They use them differently than we did. The speed of the game has changed.

In May 2012 Lendl played in Prague for the first time since the 1970s as part of the 2012 Sparta Prague Open tournament. Coincidentally Lendl and Murray are the only two players to have lost in their first four appearances in Grand Slam finals during the Open era. After reaching his first top-level singles final in 1979 he won seven singles titles in 1980 including three tournament wins in three consecutive weeks on three different surfaces.

He reached at least one Grand Slam final for 11 consecutive years a record shared with Pete Sampras with the male primacy of eight consecutive finals in a Grand Slam tournament (a record shared with Bill Tilden at the US Open). He has been described as one of the greatest tennis players of all time. Ivan Lendl (born March 7 1960) is a former world no.