Connors vs. Lendl — Connors Won the First 8. Lendl Won the Last 17.

Some rivalries stay close the whole way through. This one didn't — and that's exactly what makes it worth telling. Jimmy Connors won their first eight matches. Ivan Lendl won the next seventeen. By the time it was over, Lendl led the head-to-head 22-13 across 35 meetings, and the shape of that record tells its own story about aging in professional tennis.

An early edge that couldn't last

Connors was 7.5 years older than Lendl, and that gap explains almost everything about how this rivalry unfolded. Connors got the better of a younger, still-developing Lendl early on. Once Lendl matured into his own game, the balance of power flipped completely and never flipped back.

The finals that Connors somehow kept winning anyway

Even as Lendl closed the overall gap, Connors found a way to win when it mattered most, at least for a while. He beat Lendl in the 1982 US Open final, 6-3, 6-2, 4-6, 6-4, after reportedly challenging Lendl directly to try to hit through him. He beat him again in the 1983 US Open final, 6-3, 6-7, 7-5, 6-0 — a match Connors left briefly during the second set before coming back to close it out. Lendl got his answer eventually: their final meeting, at the 1992 US Open, went to Lendl in four sets, 3-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-0, after Connors led early and couldn't hold on.

Two eight-time major champions, two very different careers

Both men finished with 8 Grand Slam singles titles and both reached world No. 1 — nearly identical résumés, built in almost opposite order. At the majors specifically, they met seven times, with Lendl winning the last four in a row. The story of this rivalry isn't who was better. It's how completely the answer to that question changed depending on when you asked it.