As Andy Murray sat down for his post-match press conference, a giant jeroboam of champagne was placed on the table next to his newly-retained Aegon Championship trophy.
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The top-seeded Scot took his title haul in west London past the four trophies of seven current and past players, including Lleyton Hewitt, Andy Roddick, Boris Becker and John McEnroe.
“It was nice of him to stick around for the presentation”, Murray said wryly.
“It’s obviously good preparation to win the event right beforehand, but I still have eight days until my first match at Wimbledon, so there’s time to make things better and there’s also time to mess things up”, he said.
The world number two set an outright record of five Queen’s Club crowns on Sunday as he downed Milos Raonic in three sets.
“It was frustrating to be down a set and a break but I started to return well, and my serve worked very well the last couple of sets”.
Murray, in his typically low-key, laconic style, would not play along with any hype about one more “first since” headline: “It would mean a lot”.
The match itself gave me a real confidence boost as beating someone as good as Milos Raonic in that form showed me my best tennis is there – I just need to find it consistently.
Lendl and McEnroe met 33 times in their careers, once at Queen’s when Lendl won 6-2 6-4 in 1990, but Murray was keen to stress the only contest relevant here was inside the white lines. “I’m aware he’s achieved way, way more than me”.
Raonic’s first serve percentage was now dropping off, and Murray started to climb into the Canadians second serve.
While Djokovic has been resting following the long-awaited completion of his career Grand Slam at Roland Garros, Murray has been honing his grass-court game and getting reacquainted with Lendl, who proved an invaluable presence when the Scot defeated Djokovic in the Wimbledon and US Open finals.
Neither player could fashion a break point chance in a first set of high quality all court tennis. “We spoke a little bit about today’s match but mainly more about next week and planning for Wimbledon”, Murray said.
Keys’ semi-final win over Carla Suarez Navarro on Saturday saw her move into the world’s top 10 for the first time. Murray’s anger spilled into the second set and a time violation contributed to the Brit falling a break behind. “What do we do to get better over these next few days to put myself in a better position for Wimbledon?'”.
“It was a lot of fun to play here”, Raonic said.
Following runner-up finishes at the year’s first two majors in Melbourne and Paris, Murray will now hope his decision to rehire Lendl will allow him to add to the two grand slam titles he won during his first stint with the Czech-born great.
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“Even in Monte-Carlo, I was pretty close to reaching the final there too”.
