Ivan Lendl plans to turn Andy Murray into the game's master

"I didn't come into this job to have a good time," said Ivan Lendl, almost comically deadpan. That much was clear from his imperturbable demeanour, which only threatened to offer a smile once his protege had closed out the marathon final for a maiden major title.

Under the tutelage of this famously expressionless character, Andy Murray was less likely to have been embraced after his victory than to be pressed on how he would prepare for his next tournament in Tokyo in three weeks' time.

Matter-of-factly, Lendl explained: "I came here to help Andy win and he did, so it's job done." Except in one sense, the job has only just started.

Murray, having emulated his mentor in winning a grand slam final at the fifth attempt, is now targeting the establishment of a Lendl-like dynasty as a multiple major champion. That work would appear to be well advanced already, given that master and apprentice only combined forces in January.

But one could be assured that Lendl, understood to be in line for a seven-figure bonus for steering Murray to his US Open win, would not rest upon this accomplishment.

"Both Andy and I were saying, 'Give us six to nine months'," the 52 year-old said. "Do the maths. You can help somebody, clearly, in a very short period of time.

"However, it takes longer than that to help more, for the progress to set in. You cannot do that in one week, you cannot do it in one month. I hope that we are not yet anywhere near where Andy can get."

Was he convinced that Murray had the game to grasp several major titles, to rival his own eight? "I thought that when we started. Yeah."

A figure as uncompromising as the Czech-born Lendl, son of an Ostrava detective and known as 'the machine' in his playing heyday for his blend of Slavic sourness and fearsome ambition, would never have taken the chance to coach Murray without envisaging success on this scale.

He relishes these kinds of results, just as much as he loves the confrontation involved. Time and again in his post-match assessment he referred to Murray's five-set battle of wills with Novak Djokovic as a "war".

"We all know that it's a war out there," he said. "It's very unlikely you're going to win in a blowout, especially against a guy like Novak. These players are so good, and the game is much deeper than when I played 20 years ago. If you're not on top of your game every single day, someone will take you out.

"At some stage in a final, it's going to come down to who wants it more. What price are you willing to pay? Who can stay strong under the extreme pressure? You saw both of those guys at the end: they were just totally spent."

By a neat coincidence, Lendl admitted he had exactly the same sensation after finally prevailing in his fifth slam final, coming from two sets down against John McEnroe to win the 1984 French Open. "I was really sick after the match. Mentally and physically, I was totally gone. A friend of mine told me later that he had been in the locker room and I don't even remember him being in Paris."

It is the ability to emerge triumphant from such arduous struggle that Lendl has instilled so effectively in Murray. In the nine months since they agreed over lunch in Florida to work with one another, Murray has become capable of outlasting even an athlete with the outrageous stamina of Djokovic.

"Andy has been maturing very nicely as a player, as a competitor and as a person," he claimed. "The more of these situations you are in, the more comfortable you feel.

"To me, one of the most important matches of Andy's year was his loss to Novak in the Australian Open semi-final, because that was a war just like this one. It gave him the belief that he could hang in with these guys. It showed him what it took to win."

When invited, though, to describe the precise changes that he had engineered in his pupil's game, Lendl stonewalled.

"I'm not going to discuss that. Andy has a career to go, and he still has many matches to play against the top guys. If I tell you what we worked on, what we planned to work on, or even if I dissect any of his matches, I am giving away information. And as you saw in the final, the margins are so small that letting slip any detail that might help somebody else - if just for a couple of points in the match - would be suicidal."

What he did illuminate on was the informal relationship he shared with Murray.

Pressed on the main discovery he had made about his student, Lendl responded: "That his sense of humour is maybe as sick as mine. That's saying a lot.

"You don't tiptoe around if you want to tell a bad joke, and he doesn't. Nobody gets offended, everybody chuckles, and we move on."

In that spirit, and in the afterglow of the breakthrough win he had inspired, would he not at least give us a smile? "It's overrated," he said. "I like jokes. I don't like smiling too much."