Ivan Lendl had a peculiar career.  He reached 4 Slam finals before winning his first one, the 1984 French Open final, and even then, he barely won, courtesy of John McEnroe’s serve fizzling in the last few sets.  He would lose 2 more Slam finals before winning his second Slam, giving him a paltry record of 2 and 6 in his first 8 Slam finals.  But the fact of the matter was that he kept getting to finals and eventually, short of utter disaster, things would head his way.

If Lendl could have switched his wins for losses and vice versa, he would be considered a much better player.  He would have won 11 Slams, completed a career Slam, and so forth.

Lendl’s rivals were plenty.  He had problems with McEnroe, Connors, Wilander, and Becker.  Even Edberg gave him trouble.

There’s no one quite like Lendl these days.  The two closest players that are looking at 2011 to try to break through are Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic.  The two face different hurdles.

Murray spent 2010 moping around after his loss to Federer in the finals of the Australian Open.  He only started making fixes to his game sometime in the middle of the clay season in the part of the year that he’s usually at his weakest.  Murray got to the semis of Wimbledon once again, but really hit his stride at Toronto when he beefed up the aggression in his game and had one of his best weeks ever beating a resurgent David Nalbandian, Rafael Nadal, and Roger Federer in succession.

To be fair, Nadal generall doesn’t play so well returning from a long break.  Murray had played Los Angeles earlier on.

The new Murray is a bit like the new Nadal, more aggressive, using his serve better (though still needing a better first serve percentage).  His weakness is his uneven play.  In the last two US Opens, Murray faded sooner than expected, against Wawrinka in 2010 and against Cilic in 2009 (though that was more understandable).

Meanwhile Djokovic generally played pretty well in all Slams this year, losing matches he could have won, and mostly due to his weird health issues.  He had been healthy, he probably would have reached the semis of the Aussie Open, the semis of the French Open.  Had he been sharper, he might have even made the finals of Wimbledon.

By contrast, Murray reached the finals of the Aussie Open (very good), the fourth round of the French Open (to be fair, Berdych was playing quite well, so not entirely a shame to lose to him), the semis of Wimbledon (very good), and the third round of the US Open (disappointing).

Both players will be looking to break through this year, with Djokovic looking for his second Slam and Murray looking for his first.  Murray’s best chances are still on hard courts at the Aussie Open or the US Open.  But he does put pressure on himself to do well there, despite local home pressure at Wimbledon.  In a way, Murray does better at Wimbledon that he should mostly because a lot of other players can’t deal with the grass, and Murray seems to handle it better than most.

Although 2010 wasn’t a great year for Murray, he did show that he could hit hard when he wanted to.  It does come at a price.  Against Nadal, in the ATP World Tour Finals, Murray made a lot of errors.  This is something of a Federer strategy (“high risk, high reward”).  Murray seems to trot out this hyper-offensive style only when he needs to, much like Lendl used to trot out serve and volley only on grass.  One wonders if that’s wise.

Djokovic, on the other hand, has had health issues to deal with.  It almost always affects him in the first half of the year.  He usually looks far better in the second half after Wimbledon.  He also tinkered with his serve.  It’s hard to say where Djokovic’s game is.  While I could see signs of visible improvements in Murray’s game (at least, when he was on), it seemed Djokovic spent a fair bit of time trying to recover what he had lost.  It’s just that he’s quite talented, and so he still plays well in such situations.  If he can manage his health, he’s always going to be on the verge of breaking through.

The one problem for Djokovic is his record against Federer and Nadal.  In particular, Federer met Djokovic four times in 2010 (US Open, Basel, Shanghai, London) and lost once (alas, the US Open).  Djokovic didn’t always play his best against Federer.  Had Federer not been so concerned about being too tired to face Nadal, he might have tried to keep their semi match much closer.  Nadal also had success against Djokovic, though they only met twice, at the US Open final and the round robin of the ATP World Tour Finals.  In 2009, Djokovic did much better against Nadal on hard courts.

Both Federer and Nadal improved as well.  Federer started off the year well, striking his backhand better than ever.  However, once he came back on tour at Indian Wells, he looked like he had regressed some, making errors that afflicted his game back in 2009.  He continued to have issues with his game through Wimbledon.  However, after Wimbledon, he started looking much better.  He was shanking much less, and doing well in tournaments that he had done poorly in the last few years.

Indeed, his run at the end of the year at Stockholm, Basel, and the ATP World Tour Finals (marred a touch by his semifinal loss in Paris) was one of his best runs in quite some time.

In particular, Federer has been doing several things well.  First, he’s hitting his backhand quite well.  While his backhand wasn’t exactly weak, he’s sometimes had troubles trying to dictate with the shot.  He wanted to hit an aggressive ball even against high loopers that Nadal would feed to that side.  And I think he’s worked on this for at least a year, though it didn’t quite come to form until around the US Open.

Second, to counter Nadal, he’s worked in a slice serve out wide.  This shot used to be seen far more often, as most players struggled to hit a good topspin serve in the 1970s.  Slice was far more common.  Finally, Federer is trying to come to net more.  He’s been practicing this for at least a year as well, trying to approach more up the middle to cut off angles.  Of course, he’s added a drop shot to his repetoire, something he used to do rather sparingly.

Nadal was also not standing still.  Nadal understood that 2009 was a signal to him to worry about his knees more.  This meant several things.  First, he needed to cut his schedule back some more.  Second, he needed to play shorter points, which meant upping the level of his aggression.  Instead of safely looping shots up the middle until he got a short ball he could put away, he was starting to aim for the lines much earlier.  This made it even more tough for players to deal with him, but it meant they had to be aggressive from the get go.  Nadal is far too good to play safe.  If you aren’t attacking him, he’s attacking you, and that’s a bad spot to be.

For a brief time, right around the US Open, Nadal’s serve speed went up, and he was getting very hard to break.  But this seemed to have caused an injury, so he may have regressed back to a safer serve.  In any case, it lasted him long enough to win the US Open, which was key for Nadal.

The big question, as it always is, is Nadal’s physical health.

At this point, it’s hard to say whether Soderling has the game to go any higher than where he is.  He flirted with reaching number 4 in the world.  He has a hard-hitting game that generally beats most players, but he does struggle against the top players, especially Federer, but including Nadal as well.  Soderling lacks enough variety in his game to do something different when his hard-hitting style abandons him.  Yet, he, along with del Potro, are among the best hard-hitters in the game.  Most players that hit hard can only do it about once or twice before they make an error.  Soderling can club the ball 4-5 times (if it ever gets to that).

I haven’t seen Soderling’s game closely enough to see what he’s been adding.

Anyway, 2011 is likely to have a few surprises in store!