Jimmy Connors: The Games He Plays

How quickly sports fans forget. Mention the name Jimmy Connors to tennis mavens and, in most cases, you’ll hear a sweeping denunciation of his talents: he’s washed up, a mere shade of his former self, an aging, twenty-seven-year-old hero past his prime. No matter that he was ranked Number One in the world as recently as last year, and that he had held that position for the previous five years (with the exception of one week in 1978, when he dropped to Number Two behind longtime rival Bjorn Borg). When you slip to third place, you’re out of it, a bum.

In the case of Jimmy Connors, a bit of gloating accompanies this temporary amnesia. The wiry little lefty from East St. Louis, Illinois, has always been the kind of superathlete fans love to hate. Since bursting upon the international tennis scene in 1972, Connors has revolutionized not only the technique of the game – there are now few junior players who don’t wield a two-fisted backhand – but the manners of the sport. As recently as fifteen years ago, tennis was confined to the verdant pastures of Wimbledon, Newport, Philadelphia and Forest Hills, where members of polite society played the game with a stiff British upper lip. A pox on the ancestors and heirlooms of he who would applaud an opponent’s error, rejoice after smashing a winner or question a linesman’s call. That is not how gentlemen played this last of the gentlemanly sports.

Jimmy Connors changed all that. Relying upon a repertoire that ranges from comedic to obscene, Connors has forged his own style of tennis etiquette. He cheers his opponents’ unforced errors, bows deeply after serving an ace and thinks nothing of badgering an umpire after a disputed call. This may not be the style of a blue blood raised on the grass courts of Forest Hills, but it’s made Connors a winner – and a millionaire.

Connors learned his game from his mother, Gloria Connors, and from his grandmother. Even as a junior he was at the top, winning national tournaments at fancy clubs around the country and then returning to the public parks of East St. Louis, where he developed the blistering topspin strokes that keep his opponents off balance – and losers. At seventeen, when his mother could teach him no more, “Jimbo” left Illinois for Los Angeles and a swank, private high school that had no qualms about releasing him at 10:30 in the morning to practice with old pro Pancho Segura. Out there he learned the slashing, machine-gun, cross-court game that earned him the NCAA singles title in 1971 as a freshman at UCLA and the distinction of being the best tennis player in the world in 1974.

Much of the rest is familiar history: his on-again, off-again and finally finished romance with Chris Even: his $3 million libel and slander suit against Arthur Ashe; his refusal for years to play on the American Davis Cup team; his near fights with heckling tennis fans; and his five-year dominance of the game. Last year he married ‘Playboy’ magazine’s 1977 Playmate of the Year. Patti McGuire. They had a son, Brett David, last fall.

I caught up with Connors between practice sessions at the Longwood Cricket Club in Boston before the start of the U.S. Pro Championships (in which Connors would bow in the quarterfinals). “Just a warm-up for the U.S. Open,” he told me, referring to the late-summer classic in New York, which Connors has won three times. Since his marriage and the birth of his son, the word is that Connors has a new attitude – more mature, less abrasive. He also hasn’t won many tournaments during this time. I thought I’d see if there was a correlation.

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The new Jimmy Connors seems to be filled with sweetness and light. Has married life really done that to you?
I don’t think so. I think people see me in a different way. They might realize now that everything I did when I was young – when I first started playing as a pro – was to make me play better tennis.

What sort of things?
Well, I’d talk to myself and slap myself on the leg and yell and scream. I always did the yelling and screaming at myself, not at anybody else. And it wasn’t to hurt anybody, or to take my anger out at anybody but myself. I still do the same things, but now people understand that I do them to help me play better tennis, and it works.

Billie Jean King was one of the first modern tennis players to emote on the court. Did you emulate her in that regard?
No, I’m a natural. Everything I do out there is natural. There’s nothing that’s planned at any time. Everything that happens to me while I’m playing, and the things that I do, just comes out on the spur of the moment. That’s why I can’t regret anything that has happened or will happen as far as my tennis goes.
A lot of people don’t realize what it’s like out there. I’m playing against somebody equal in talent, on a hot day, and I’m tired and thirsty; and I’ve got something else on my mind. A lot of people have never been put in that position and can’t understand what can really go on out there. It’s pretty tough sometimes.