FULL VERSION 1985 Lendl vs McEnroe US Open

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Thank you for your gracious use of this classic match!


PertSnergleman's Review:


The demons have chased Ivan Lendl from Paris to Sydney, from London to New York.

Everywhere he's has gone, the fear has chased him. Burdened by his talent and penchant for failure when the pressure was greatest, he suffered with the knowledge that people respected his skills and questioned his courage.

A heavy thunderstorm whipped through the National Tennis Center and threatened to postpone the 1985 final for at least a day. That would have helped McEnroe, who admitted his five-set marathon victory over Mats Wilander Saturday, played in 114-degree weather, left him sapped.

''I need to be at the top of my game to beat Lendl,'' he said.

However, the skies cleared an hour before the match and the cement courts were dried and then Ivan Lendl did it... he did it by volleying his ass off, by winning the big points as he never had won them in his life, by playing with his heart and his emotions on his sleeve.

For the victory, Lendl collected $187,500. McEnroe received $93,750.

Ivan Lendl understood that he would never be able to silence his critics with words. No one ever sweet-talked his way to the United States Open championship. No, Lendl would have to prove his mettle on a tennis court, in the heat of a big match against the best player in the world. Only when he was confronted with still one more opportunity to crack -and survive - would Lendl be considered a champion, too.

This, remember, was the player Jimmy Connors said lacked courage. This was the player still paying for purposely losing a match to Connors several years ago in the Masters tournament in a round-robin format under which a loss benefited him.

This was the player who, despite 47 career victories before yesterday's Open final, had been defeated in six of seven Grand Slam finals. And McEnroe poured water on that lone victory in the 1984 French Open when he said that he had choked against Lendl in the final.

And Lendl was the player who was competing in his fourth consecutive Open final yesterday with the very real chance he would achieve an ignominious type of Grand Slam.

''But I would go crazy after a week if I would go all the time by what's written,'' Lendl said. ''I think the worst thing to do is to be afraid of something. I just say to myself to keep trying, one of these days you have to get it no matter what. If you play in 75 finals you have to win some no matter how bad you play or how great the opponent plays.''

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