Andy Murray and Ivan Lendl, the partnership that began the “former champ tutoring the current superstar” trend in tennis, ended rather abruptly Wednesday, with Murray announcing on his website that Lendl would no longer be coaching him.  It came as a surprise because there was no inkling of discord in Murray’s camp and because he won his first two Grand Slam championships and an Olympic gold medal under Lendl’s guidance.  “I’m eternally grateful to Ivan for all his hard work over the past two years, the most successful of my career so far,” Murray said in his announcement. “As a team, we’ve learned a lot and it will definitely be of benefit in the future. I’ll take some time with the team to consider the next steps and how we progress from here.”  This season, Murray is returning from surgery to alleviate a back injury that kept him out of the French Open in 2013 and crimped his attempt to successfully defend his United States Open title. That season ended the wildly successful run Murray enjoyed since teaming with Lendl early in 2012. Together, they celebrated Murray’s victory over Roger Federer to win an Olympic gold medal in London in 2012 and the United States Open title later the same year. In 2013, he became the first British man to win Wimbledon in 77 years.  “He’s made me learn more from the losses than I did before and he’s always been very honest with me and believed in me when other people maybe didn’t,” Murray said of Lendl after his Wimbledon victory.  Their partnership seemed to spawn a trend that soon included Federer working with the former champion Stefan Edberg and Novak Djokovic hiring Boris Becker in December.  Before Murray’s major breakthrough at the United States Open in 2012, he had been 0-4 in Grand Slam finals. Before him, Lendl had been the only other man in the Open era to lose his first four major finals. Lendl went on to win eight Grand Slam singles titles in his career and held the No. 1 ranking for 270 weeks.  When Lendl and Murray first tried working together, in December 2011, they said that they immediately connected. Their first Grand Slam event after officially teaming as player and coach did not go so well, however, with Murray losing a heartbreaking four-set Wimbledon final to Federer in 2012.  Only a month later, on the same court, Murray got his signature win, beating Federer in the Olympic gold medal match.  “Working with Andy over the last two years has been a fantastic experience for me,” Lendl said in Murray’s announcement. “He is a first-class guy. Having helped him achieve his goal of winning major titles, I feel like it is time for me to concentrate on some of my own projects moving forward, including playing more events around the world, which I am really enjoying.  “I will always be in Andy’s corner and wish him nothing but great success as he too goes into a new phase of his career.”  Lendl’s recent schedule has included exhibition matches in Kansas City, Mo.; Oklahoma City; Nashville; Charlotte, N.C.; and London. He also conducts clinics, most recently in the Canary Islands, and has opened the Ivan Lendl Junior Tennis Academy in Bluffton, S.C.  Murray will defend his title in Miami title next week before playing in the Davis Cup for Britain in the quarterfinals against Italy.
In two years with Ivan Lendl as his coach, Andy Murray turned from a four-time Grand Slam runner-up into a two-time major champion.