This part-time CT resident, Tennis Hall of Famer has turned his competitive fire to pickleball

PLAINVILLE – It hit Scott Trevethan one day when he was hitting groundstrokes with his pickleball doubles partner Ivan Lendl – he was playing with a tennis legend.

“When 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,” said Trevethan, a former Division I college tennis player who lives in Berlin.

“In pickleball, you don’t normally just stand at the baseline and hit groundstrokes and when I would do that with him, it was surreal, because it was like, ‘Wow, I’m hitting groundstrokes with Ivan Lendl.’ That was cool.”

Now they’re just friends.

“We’ve become very, very good friends and confidantes,” Trevethan said.

“I’ve played so much, and with the same people – they’re used to it,” Lendl said last week after playing with Trevethan for two hours at Camp Pickleball in Plainville.

Lendl, 66, the Hall of Fame tennis player 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.

“I am retired, that’s why I can do that,” he said. “I don’t sit around. No, that’s not for me.”

He’s one of many retired professional tennis players who have picked up the sport. In 1986, Lendl beat Mikael Pernfors of Sweden – who was ranked as high as No. 10 on the ATP tour in 1986 – for the French Open title.

Now the two former pros team up at pickleball tournaments to play doubles.

“We play a lot of tournaments together,” Lendl said. “He lives in Vero Beach.”

Lendl started playing pickleball four years ago when one of his five daughters, Isabelle, encouraged him to try it.

“I was like everybody else, every other tennis player, when it came around, ‘Oh, this is stupid, I don’t want to do this…’” Lendl said. “Then I played a few times and I got hooked.

“I enjoy it, it’s good exercise, good friendships, a lot of fun.”

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) 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., he won two gold medals in men’s doubles and a gold medal and a silver in mixed doubles.

“The enjoyment of getting better is what really drives me,” Lendl said. “I do enjoy working and trying to get better. I was always like that in tennis and golf. I don’t do as many sports as other people, but the ones I do, I go full out.”

Shona Kerr of Middletown, the men’s and women’s 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.

“I love the intensity of it,” said Kerr, who started playing pickleball six years ago. “As a former professional sports player, I appreciate that level of intensity of training which can be sometimes hard to find. Anywhere.

“We go hard. We share knowledge of things that we figure out about this sport and try and help each other.”

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.

“I play singles, doubles, mixed doubles, although I don’t play much singles,” he said. “It’s too much running and I have two new hips.

“I have been working really hard to get moving a little better. It’s still not what I would like it to be, but it’s a lot better than it was, say, six months ago.”

To that end, every day, he does footwork drills with an agility ladder. He’s working on his leg turnover, sprinting 10 yards, slowing down, then sprinting again.

“It is improving, just not fast enough for my taste,” he said. “Once the footwork is where it needs to be … it’s like tennis: in order to hit the ball well, you have to be in good position. If you’re not in position, it’s difficult to hit the ball. That’s what I work on every day at home. No exceptions. Agility with the ladder, and lots of squats and lunges – as much as my knees can handle.”

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

“I’ve been playing with (Lendl) for two years now, give or take,” Trevethan said. “We 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 – which was quite a bit this past winter, like every other week – we play.”

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

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

He enjoys listening to Lendl strategize.

“The 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,” he said. “I would say our pickleball knowledge is similar, but his racket sport experience is exemplary.

“He 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.”

Trevethan sees that forehand a lot.

“We go at it because I’ve been training with him five days a week for a year and a half,” he said. “I have a little bit of an unfair advantage.

“When we play others, they underestimate his skill because of his age; they learn quickly that’s a mistake. He has unbelievably fast hands at the net. He’s very quick; he’s as quick as the top kids. His anticipation and timing is still world class.”

Trevethan and Kerr have tried to get Lendl to play on the team with them, but he doesn’t want to travel.

He does like playing in tournaments, but there aren’t 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 – the USA Pickleball National Championships are in San Diego, and as Lendl said, “That’s more than two hours by car.”

“I just enjoy staying home,” he said. “I have my family, my dogs.”

Lendl said he doesn’t miss tennis – “Not really. It’s so long ago, it feels like another lifetime” – but pickleball has allowed him to tap into his former competitive tennis mentality.

“Yeah, I’m pretty intense,” he said. “Obviously, those are different levels, right? You cannot compare the (ATP) tour and playing (pickleball) with 60-year-olds. But yeah, I would say I’m intense.

“I want to win. I do OK.”