Like father, like daughters as Lendlettes seek stardom

The Grand Slam tennis great was thwarted every time he played on grass but, undaunted, he is driving his brilliant brood towards the top of women's golf. James Corrigan on one of the most extraordinary families in world sport

It may come as something of a surprise, but Ivan Lendl has not given up on winning a Grand Slam tournament in Britain. He can picture it now; all those agonising failures at Wimbledon redressed in one perfect swoosh, one glorious glide across that carpet of green breaking the Lendl stare into a cry of fulfilment as that glaring gap on the mantelpiece is at last filled.

Yes, the Women's British Open will be sweet indeed.

Alas, the 46-year-old's dream will not be coming to life this year, next week at Royal Lytham, as none of his four golf-playing daughters is yet old enough or good enough to appear alongside Annika Sorenstam and co at the fourth women's major. The "yet" is the important part of that sentence, though, for make no mistake, the Lendlettes are coming. They are at the forefront of sport's great revolution.

Girls' golf has exploded in America and the fallout is heading this way. Kiran Matharu is the first British embodiment, the brilliant 17-year-old from Yorkshire at this week's Curtis Cup. But still, in comparison to the States our progress has been slow. Where are the Wies, the Pressels, the Creamers? Where are the Lendls, even? Their story is interesting purely because of who their father happens to be, but it is even more pertinent as the family sets about showing exactly what is entailed in reaching the promised land.

Isabelle Lendl is 14 years old and fifth on the US girls' rankings while her sister Marika is 16 and ranked 15th. Then there is Daniela, reportedly with the biggest potential of the lot of them, and Nikki, eight, but already with her dolls decked out in plus fours. There is always the odd one out, of course, and Isabelle's twin, Caroline, follows her mother, Samantha, in putting horses above courses. But four out of five ain't bad. Not when their father goes to the local shopping centres and sees what they could be doing.

"I had to go to the mall the other day and there were all these girls there, the age of my daughters, not really doing anything," says Lendl. "They were just there. That's scary. At a mall - all day. You never know what could happen. I'm just glad my daughters have golf. I don't need to wonder where they are. I know where they are - at the course, working on their game."

Lendl is sure of it because, like everything in his life, he has made sure of it. The tennis great, who won eight majors and spent almost a third of his playing days as world No 1, did so by turning the possibles into probables and the could-bes into would-bes. He was the prototype of the modern professional, establishing a work ethic never even imagined before and pinning up a simple mission statement in the locker-room that has since been set in the stone - "whatever it takes".

In fatherhood as in career; on fairway as on baseline.

The Lendls were rather comfortable two years ago, living in their £14m Connecticut home with more than enough room for Ivan, his six females, his three dogs and his trophy room of memories. But Lendl always did " comfort" like John McEnroe did "compliant" and when Marika's golf reached a stage where she had outgrown his teachings he knew it was time to act.

"The person who won all those tennis tournaments seems like somebody else now, so who cares what I did 15 or 20 years ago?" he asks. " I'm much more interested in helping the girls play better golf now."

So the mansion was swapped for a condominium, the 10 bedrooms for four and the serene private grounds for a bustling campus as Lendl moved the family to Bradenton, Florida and the David Leadbetter Golf Academy (ironically, adjacent to the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy). His eldest enrolled first and, last year, so did Isabelle and Daniela and soon the household was ringing to the sound of early-morning alarm calls. Dedication in teenaged girls has rarely been expressed so blearily.

Take Marika's day. Her regular, out-of-competition schedule starts by getting up at 6am, having a half-hour work-out before striding to the first tee for 7.30am. Class then follows from noon to 4pm, followed by another work-out, some homework and, if she is lucky, a few holes, or more practice, before bedtime. "I love it," she says, without a moment's hesitation. "But I'm so tired on my days off, all I want to do is sleep. "

It would be tempting to envisage Ivan the Terrible bursting into her bedroom, flailing a two-iron, a bag of balls and a pair of golf spikes and screaming "get back to work". But the reality is nothing like that, even if her introduction to the game may make it seem so. Just over three years ago, Marika gave up tennis and assigned the void in her heart over to having a pet. "There was so much pressure in tennis, you know?" she remembers. "People kept asking, 'Are you going to be just like your dad?' I needed to do something different."

Her father knew just the thing. "She really wanted a dog and I kept telling her no," he says. "I told her I don't care if you pick a sport and want to do it professionally or just for fun, but you have to do something." Marika buckled and a compromise was struck - a German Shepherd and she would join her golf-obsessed father on the course. Isabelle had already succumbed and was improving by the day, the round, the shot. Startlingly so.

"Dad would play with us and teach us how to play and what to do," recalls Isabelle. "But I can beat him now. Off the men's tees."

As someone so proud of his own scratch handicap that not too long ago he harboured thoughts of turning professional himself, the old man admits that - begrudgingly. In truth, it is no shame. Isabelle can beat almost everybody now, certainly anybody in her age group and, indeed, most women in the game. Last year she was the youngest qualifier in the US Women's Amateur and last month was besides herself when she failed to get through to the US Women's Open and her first major. Apart from that, it has been a season of success as she has established herself as the No 1 Lendl, a ranking that will soon have some relevance in world golf if the family's ambition is any gauge at all.

A fascinating insight into this most competitive of households was provided recently in an article in The New Yorker magazine, in which the author, a family friend, spent a day at Lendl towers. In it, he wrote of the father coming across as "half dictator, half minor functionary with purely ceremonial duties". As he is outnumbered six-to-one, even his wife sometimes feels sorry for him. "All the girls gang up on him," says Samantha. "They have an ongoing battle for control. They're trying to take it and he's trying to maintain it." So far, Ivan seems to be a break down in the third. (Or should that be two down with three to play?)

Daniela is the most headstrong and most similar to her father. Nicknamed "Crash" because of a propensity for charging into static objects, she summed up her view on sport when she was eight. She had informed her stunned parents that she was going to be an ice hockey professional and persuaded them to let her stay up to see a women's match. "Why didn't she just smash her into the glass?" she asked when a player pressed another against the boards. "I told her there's no checking in women's hockey," says Ivan. "She said, 'You're kidding me' and went straight to bed, disgusted."

Golf would hardly appear to be a bloody-enough substitute, although the sport has changed, especially in the girls' section which is easily the fastest growing in the game in numbers and competitiveness. The phenomenon of Michelle Wie - not to her mention the $10m (£5.4m) of endorsements she instantly received when turning professional last autumn - has led to a stampede of dollar-hungry parents to the nearest country club, although, intriguingly, it is not Wie or any other of the female stars who has inspired the girls themselves. "I respect Annika [Sorenstam, the world No 1] and admire her," says Marika. "But I'm just not a huge fan. I've grown up watching men's golf and Tiger [Woods]."

This has been yet another family pursuit; for while the girls watched the boy, the father studied the father. "Can you create athletes or do they just happen?" asks Lendl. "I think you can create them and I think Earl Woods proved that. People sometimes ask me, 'How much talent did you have for tennis?' Well, how do you measure talent? Yeah, sure McEnroe had more feel for the ball, but I knew how to work and I worked harder than he did. Is that a talent in itself? I think it is."

It is a quality he sees in his girls. "When you want to be at the top of your game you can't leave anything to chance," he says. "That's what I'm trying to explain to my kids. They don't understand it yet." But what they do most definitely understand is the nature of competition. They cannot fail to. "I have told the girls since they were little babies that if ever they beat me they will know they earned it, because I will never give them anything," confesses Lendl. "If Nikki wants to race me from here to there, I won't let her win - she has to beat me. The same's true in golf."

Nikki will some day, just as Marika, Isabelle and Daniela already have. Winning is an inherent part of life for the Lendlettes and should it dry up prematurely - like it very well could to one or, in fact, all of them - then it must be a concern as to what happens next.

But not to Ivan, who, as he ferries them across America to up to 25 tournaments a year, only sees the formation of super human beings, not superbrats.

"For all my kids, my goal for them is to do a sport where they stay busy, have schedules, stay out of trouble and, hopefully, have their sport for a lifetime," he said. "Would I like them to be the best in the world? Of course I would, but that's not the most important thing."

With that he was off to repeat the mantra to his girls, although he was not too hopeful of them listening. "As the father I'm almost always wrong," he says. But not about this, surely. His surname is about to be up in lights again. Who said Lendl could never win on grass?

Doing their own thing: Sporting offspring who have changed direction

* LIAM BOTHAM

Son of the English cricket legend Ian, he initially followed his father into county cricket with Hampshire, before opting to play rugby union in 1997. He represented West Hartlepool, Cardiff, Newcastle and England's Under-21 and A sides before again switching codes, to rugby league in 2003. He was forced to retire from the sport in 2005 following a neck injury after playing for Leeds and Wigan.

* IAN BRIGHTWELL

Son of the Olympic gold medallist Ann Packer and 400m runner Robbie Brightwell, he is now a player-coach at Macclesfield Town, having played most notably for Manchester City from the age of 14. Ian won England Under-21 caps and his brother David also played for Manchester City.

* JAMES CONTEH

His father, John, was a British boxer, a world light-heavyweight champion who also won the BBC's Superstars competition in 1974. James, however, plays golf. He narrowly missed out in qualifying for last week's Open Championship.

* ED FRYATT

His father, Jim, was a legend at Southport and still holds the record for the fastest League goal (4 sec). Ed is a golfer, who has made $212,903 (£114,000) this year, putting him 243rd in the money list on the USPGA Tour. He has played in 76 events and made the cut 32 times.

* ELENA BALTACHA

Both the tennis player's parents represented the USSR. Her father, Sergei, was a footballer and played in this country for Ipswich and her mother, Olga, was an Olympic athlete in the pentathlon and heptathlon. Elena is ranked 234th in the world but is injured and not due to return to playing until 2007. Her career best ranking is 118 in March 2005, the year she reached the third round at the Australian Open and Wimbledon.