{"id":52215,"date":"2026-08-17T11:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T11:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/52215\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T11:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T11:18:09","slug":"tennis-great-ivan-lendl-turns-his-competitive-edge-to-pickleball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/52215\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennis great Ivan Lendl turns his competitive edge to pickleball"},"content":{"rendered":"

PLAINVILLE \u2013 It hit Scott Trevethan one day when he was hitting groundstrokes with his pickleball<\/a> doubles partner Ivan Lendl<\/a> \u2013 he was playing with a tennis legend.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we first started training together, we both agreed we needed to train to get better than a lot of (their opponents), and we would just hit groundstrokes,\u201d said Trevethan, a former Division I college tennis player<\/a> who lives in Berlin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn pickleball, you don\u2019t normally just stand at the baseline and hit groundstrokes and when I would do that with him, it was surreal, because it was like, \u2018Wow, I\u2019m hitting groundstrokes with Ivan Lendl.\u2019 That was cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now they\u2019re just friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve become very, very good friends and confidantes,\u201d Trevethan said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve played so much, and with the same people \u2013 they\u2019re used to it,\u201d Lendl said last week after playing with Trevethan for two hours at Camp Pickleball<\/a> in Plainville.<\/p>\n

Lendl, 66, the Hall of Fame tennis player<\/a> who won eight Grand Slam titles and was the top-ranked player in the world for 270 weeks in the 1980s, now spends his summers in Cornwall and the winters in Vero Beach, Fla. In both places, most days, you will find him working out in his home gym, on the golf course, or on a pickleball court, or some combination of the three.<\/p>\n

\"FormerFormer professional tennis player Ivan Lendl plays pickleball in Plainville, Conn., Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026. (Jessica Hill\/Special to the Courant)<\/p>\n

\u201cI am retired, that\u2019s why I can do that,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t sit around. No, that\u2019s not for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s one of many retired professional tennis players who have picked up the sport. In 1986, Lendl beat Mikael Pernfors of Sweden<\/a> \u2013 who was ranked as high as No. 10 on the ATP tour in 1986 \u2013 for the French Open title.<\/p>\n

Now the two former pros team up at pickleball tournaments to play doubles.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe play a lot of tournaments together,\u201d Lendl said. \u201cHe lives in Vero Beach.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lendl started playing pickleball four years ago when one of his five daughters, Isabelle, encouraged him to try it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like everybody else, every other tennis player, when it came around, \u2018Oh, this is stupid, I don\u2019t want to do this\u2026\u2019\u201d Lendl said. \u201cThen I played a few times and I got hooked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI enjoy it, it\u2019s good exercise, good friendships, a lot of fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"FormerFormer professional tennis player Ivan Lendl, bottom right plays pickleball with former UConn tennis coach Glenn Marshall, top left, and Scott Trevethan of Berlin, top right, in Plainville, Conn., Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026. (Jessica Hill\/Special to the Courant)<\/p>\n

Lendl plays at the highest skill level in his age group (65-69) when he plays as an amateur; his Dynamic Universal Pickleball Rating (DUPR)<\/a> is 5.281 (the scale goes to 8.0 but only a handful of players approach the upper 7s). He also plays in the pro division in some tournaments. Earlier this year at the U.S. Open in Naples, Fla.<\/a>, he won two gold medals in men\u2019s doubles and a gold medal and a silver in mixed doubles.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe enjoyment of getting better is what really drives me,\u201d Lendl said. \u201cI do enjoy working and trying to get better. I was always like that in tennis and golf. I don\u2019t do as many sports as other people, but the ones I do, I go full out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shona Kerr<\/a> of Middletown, the men\u2019s and women\u2019s squash coach at Wesleyan who was a former professional squash player, appreciates that. Kerr plays with Lendl often in mixed doubles and the two have been training together for about a year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the intensity of it,\u201d said Kerr, who started playing pickleball six years ago. \u201cAs a former professional sports player, I appreciate that level of intensity of training which can be sometimes hard to find. Anywhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe go hard. We share knowledge of things that we figure out about this sport and try and help each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lendl, who retired from tennis because of a degenerative spinal condition in 1994 when he was 34 years old, had both hips replaced 10 years ago. He got himself back into shape to play golf competitively after that, but pickleball was a different story.<\/p>\n

\u201cI play singles, doubles, mixed doubles, although I don\u2019t play much singles,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s too much running and I have two new hips.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been working really hard to get moving a little better. It\u2019s still not what I would like it to be, but it\u2019s a lot better than it was, say, six months ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

To that end, every day, he does footwork drills with an agility ladder. He\u2019s working on his leg turnover, sprinting 10 yards, slowing down, then sprinting again.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is improving, just not fast enough for my taste,\u201d he said. \u201cOnce the footwork is where it needs to be \u2026 it\u2019s like tennis: in order to hit the ball well, you have to be in good position. If you\u2019re not in position, it\u2019s difficult to hit the ball. That\u2019s what I work on every day at home. No exceptions. Agility with the ladder, and lots of squats and lunges \u2013 as much as my knees can handle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"FormerFormer professional tennis player Ivan Lendl plays pickleball, right, with teammate Scott Trevethan of Berlin, left, in Plainville, Conn., Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026. (Jessica Hill\/Special to the Courant)<\/p>\n

Last Thursday, he was playing doubles with Trevethan, former UConn tennis coach Glenn Marshall<\/a> and Augie Smith, son of the late Berlin High tennis coach Rex Smith<\/a> in Plainville.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been playing with (Lendl) for two years now, give or take,\u201d Trevethan said. \u201cWe played in a tournament against each other in Florida 2-3 winters ago. We found out that we had a Connecticut connection and it turns out my mother lives one town from him when he winters in Florida. So every time I go to see her \u2013 which was quite a bit this past winter, like every other week \u2013 we play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trevethan was a tennis player at Berlin High and Central Connecticut State University. His son Jon was a state champion at Berlin High<\/a>. Scott started playing pickleball when he was waiting for his son during his tennis lessons.<\/p>\n

Now he, along with Kerr, is a part owner and player for the Austin (Texas) Ignite,<\/a> a professional pickleball team in the Major League Pickleball Champions Series,<\/a> a pro league for masters age group players.<\/p>\n

He enjoys listening to Lendl strategize.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fun part is he loves to rip apart the game, strategy-wise, so I get an inside look at what he used to do from a tennis perspective,\u201d he said. \u201cI would say our pickleball knowledge is similar, but his racket sport experience is exemplary.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe still has a world class forehand. Even the top pros say he hits the ball as hard as anyone they play with. His movement is a little limited, but his forehand is lethal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trevethan sees that forehand a lot.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe go at it because I\u2019ve been training with him five days a week for a year and a half,\u201d he said. \u201cI have a little bit of an unfair advantage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we play others, they underestimate his skill because of his age; they learn quickly that\u2019s a mistake. He has unbelievably fast hands at the net. He\u2019s very quick; he\u2019s as quick as the top kids. His anticipation and timing is still world class.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trevethan and Kerr have tried to get Lendl to play on the team with them, but he doesn\u2019t want to travel.<\/p>\n

He does like playing in tournaments, but there aren\u2019t as many in New England for him where he could be competitive as there are in Florida. The U.S. Open is the biggest tournament he will go to \u2013 the USA Pickleball National Championships are in San Diego, and as Lendl said, \u201cThat\u2019s more than two hours by car.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI just enjoy staying home,\u201d he said. \u201cI have my family, my dogs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lendl said he doesn\u2019t miss tennis \u2013 \u201cNot really. It\u2019s so long ago, it feels like another lifetime\u201d \u2013 but\u00a0pickleball has allowed him to tap into his former competitive tennis mentality.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I\u2019m pretty intense,\u201d he said. \u201cObviously, those are different levels, right? You cannot compare the (ATP) tour and playing (pickleball) with 60-year-olds. But yeah, I would say I\u2019m intense.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to win. I do OK.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PLAINVILLE \u2013 It hit Scott Trevethan one day when he was hitting groundstrokes with his pickleball doubles partner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[18408,19519,7134,19518,366,7136,3590,19520,543,19521,4899,28,9311],"class_list":["post-52215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-connecticut","tag-cornwall","tag-ct-news","tag-ct-sports","tag-grand-slam","tag-hartford-courant","tag-ivan-lendl","tag-ivan-lendl-tennis","tag-local-news","tag-max-image-preview","tag-pickleball","tag-tennis","tag-tennis-hall-of-fame"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}