The Outsider: A Memoir

by Jimmy Connors

  Not that I was beyond a little fire stoking myself when the opportunity presented itself. The day before the first practice session, which was open to the public as well as the press, I handed Bill a slip of paper.

  He smiled when he read it.

  “Sure, Jimmy. Consider it done.”

  When I walked on court the next day, the fans who had gathered early, including a pack of workmen desperately trying to finish building the seats in time, did a double take. There across the back of my warm-up jacket, printed in giant letters, were the words for all the world to see: BETTER THAN 7 UP.

  Winner-takes-all was Bill’s genius marketing spin. All you have to do is look at the viewing figures. CBS broadcast the Laver Challenge Match, putting up $60,000 for the privilege, pitching it directly against ABC’s well-established Wide World of Sports in the schedule. They spanked them in the ratings, with more than a 33 share to Wide World’s 28.

  Those are football or baseball numbers. But tennis? Unheard of. Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King had laid the groundwork in September 1973, with their Battle of the Sexes, but Riordan raised the bar. It was the money, of course, that drew the big ratings; people who didn’t know a drop shot from a tee shot were tuning in because they were curious to watch two champions from different eras slug it out for a gigantic pot of cash. The winner’s prize money, $100,000, was beyond anything that tennis had seen, more than what I walked away with by winning the 1974 US Open.

  We were setting a new standard, making the sports world sit up and take notice. Suddenly tennis was big business, and Bill was in the catbird seat, pulling in TV money, sponsor fees, and a bundle from Caesars Palace to make up the purse. I say “purse” because that’s what prizefighters called it. Bill had created the World Heavyweight Championship of Tennis, and Caesars was only too happy to construct a 4,000-seat stadium that resembled a tennis court disguised as a boxing ring. I’d never seen anything like it before. The fans were right up against the court, close enough for us to sweat on them. It was an intense, combative atmosphere. And the noise! Man, it made the air thick. Bill even introduced our courtside cornermen: Roy Emerson for Laver and Pancho Segura for me.

  Laver delays his entrance, a touch of showmanship on his part, which gives me a few minutes to take in the scene. What the hell? The fans are booing me. Really? I’m in Las Vegas. I’m from the USA! Rod’s Australian, and I know he has a lot of fans, but come on! All it does is get me more pumped up.

  The place is in an uproar for Laver. It’s Christians-and-lions time. OK, so he’s a tennis legend, and, yeah, he’s come out of retirement to play, but even so, this is just bizarre. I’m sensitive. Don’t you know that by now? You back me into a corner and I’m going to come out swinging . . .

  I’m jumping up and down trying to get my Tiger Juices flowing. Let’s get it on. Where is Laver? I scan the ringside seats and see Clint Eastwood, Charlton Heston, Johnny Carson—all American icons, and it looks like they’re cheering for Laver. It’s too much.

  “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” I yell.

  Now I’m dancing around the court and flipping the bird at everyone. They’re all just faces in a hostile crowd, even the stars of stage and screen at courtside.

  Afterward I heard that Carson took my antics personally. Years later, I went on his Tonight Show, and he was still nervous, tiptoeing around anything remotely controversial. Johnny, wherever you are, my friend, I wasn’t offended by your support for Laver. I know you loved tennis, and your presence at the match just gave it more credibility. You know my motto: You can be for me or against me, I don’t care, just as long as you are there.

  It’s the sounds of the match that have stayed with me over the years. Every shot echoed around that tight stadium like a bullet ricocheting off the walls. The crowd quickly got sucked into the action, and we fed off their energy and emotion.

  It was an historic occasion. People were witnessing the changing of the guard in tennis. Laver: the elder statesman, low-key, experienced, a finesse player able to fight off the onslaught of groundstrokes that this young, cocky kid threw at him. I raised my game; he matched me. He raised his, and I shut him down. We played some sick tennis out there. The first two sets went my way, but in the third, when Rod should have been tiring, he began to punch killer volley after killer volley into the corners and drilled passing shots down the line, leaving me to shake my head in awe.

  We’re in the fourth set and Rod has somehow managed to save five match points. The great old comedienne Totie Fields is in the front row, where she’s been heckling me throughout the match. Now she’s leaping out of her seat and yelling for Laver every time he staves off defeat. As I waste another opportunity to put him away, Totie lets out an ear-piercing shriek of delight. I whirl around and give her the finger.

  “Shut. Up.”

  Yeah, I know, not very classy, but Totie was a tough cookie, and she could take it as well as she could dish it out.

  Holding serve drained Rod. He had battled hard to stay in the match, but the heat and the intensity finally got to him, and I took the final two games easily to win the set 7-5. It was a victory that not only served to confirm my top-dog status in the sport but also put a whopping 100 grand in my pocket. I don’t think Rod was complaining, either; he walked away with a check for $60,000. Not bad for the loser of a winner-takes-all match.

  The problem with a misspent youth is that you misspend it. In Beverly Hills, I find I have a taste for the good life, but I keep it under control, refusing to let it interfere with my tennis. I stick by that into my early twenties, rigidly disciplined when I have to be, but now I feel invincible. OK, Newcombe has proved that isn’t strictly true, but that was on the other side of the world. Here in my backyard, I rule, and nothing and no one can touch me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some partying to catch up on.

  That’s how I felt through most of 1975. After all the success of the previous year, people warned me to be careful of the slump that would follow, but I ignored them. What slump? That isn’t going to happen to me. I’m too smart and too damn good.

  At the start of the year, I won in Salisbury and Boca Raton, to increase my total wins to four by mid-February, not including the Laver match. I had nothing to worry about and I deserved to have a good time. I had earned it. My tennis wasn’t suffering, so I thought it could go on forever. The thing is, when you’re number one, the heavyweight tennis champion of the world, you start to believe your own hype. There’s only one direction you can travel, and it’s not up.

  I had broken up with my girlfriend, and I wasn’t in the mood to settle down yet. Nasty and I hit the restaurants and clubs hard whenever we could—before, during, and after tournaments. If there were girls around, we’d chase them. If not, no problem—we had fun just hanging out with our buddies. Besides, there were plenty of times when Nasty would show up at my door in the wee hours with twins on his arm. There’s nothing better for your game than a lively session of mixed doubles at 2 a.m.

  Right through the 1970s and into the ’80s, it was wild. We were treated like rock stars, A-list celebrities, but I kept my private life a mystery as much as I could. But still, with all the stuff that was being written about me, after 1974 in particular, the attention I was getting went off the charts. Wherever I went, people would turn and stare. And look at the places the tour would take us: Maui, San Diego, Palm Springs, New York. They had everything a red-blooded American man could ever want. Everything. And then there was Paris, London, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, Monte Carlo. It’s almost like a dream to me now.

  Did I make the most of it? In 1975 I did, no question about it. Along with Nasty, there was “Broadway Vitas” Gerulaitis. His personality and charisma were infectious, and he would hold court when we went out for dinner at the Playboy Club, for drinks at the Daisy, or to discos like Studio 54, in New York, and Annabel’s, in London. I would sit with him in the VIP banquette—a drink in one hand, a model in the other—thinking, “Not bad for a working-class kid from Eas
t St. Louis.”

  Drugs were everywhere, especially cocaine, and there was no getting away from it. I’d walk into a bar or restaurant and people would be openly snorting lines of coke right off the table. That was never my scene. I didn’t need to go looking for more vices. Girls? No problem. Alcohol? I was good at that, too, but although I came from an Irish background, I was never a big drinker during my prime (but I certainly made up for it later on). When I was out socializing, I’d have a beer or wine, very rarely hard liquor. I wanted to stay in control; that’s part of my nature. I never allowed myself to become completely shit-faced in public. Falling out of a bar and not remembering how I got home wasn’t my thing. At least, not then.

  I was always careful to avoid guilt by association, especially when I was in the company of known druggies. Timing has always been one of my strengths, and if I saw trouble on the horizon, I made sure I was out of there before it arrived. I was living my dream and I wasn’t about to blow it for some half-assed high. I don’t want to sound corny, but my drug of choice had always been tennis.

  I was lucky to have friends who watched my back. I remember one evening when I was offered a line of coke; before I could even respond, Vitas had the guy by the collar and was dragging him toward the door, saying, “I told you to keep that shit away from Connors!”

  A few years later, my buddy Gerry Goldberg and I were at Adriano Panatta’s place in Milan. It was wall to wall with Italian models. At some point, we went into the kitchen to refill our glasses, and we saw several of the girls with straws stuck up their noses. It didn’t take me long to figure out that this wasn’t some new fashion trend.

  “Gerry, come on,” I said, grabbing his sleeve, “we’re out of here. If I’m caught around this stuff, I’m screwed.”

  We bounded down the steps three at a time to the sidewalk; I wasn’t hanging around for someone to take a photograph of me with those girls in the background. Presto! Career over.

  No, it was gambling that did it for me. I was an action junkie. In Vegas or London I would play craps, blackjack, whatever. At Wimbledon I would bet on myself in each round. Every year. The local bookmakers knew me well. In the US, if I wanted to put my money on sports, I had no trouble finding someone to take my bet. On tour the players gambled with each other on backgammon or cards, normally gin. I needed that buzz and thought I could handle it.

  The problem in 1975 was that I forgot all of the lessons I had been taught. Mom used to say, “Jimmy, remember, what you don’t get accomplished by midnight probably won’t get accomplished at all.” And just to make sure I got the point, she’d add, “There comes a time when you have to back off. The fun starts to go down and the trouble starts to go up.”

  Pancho would say something similar to Spencer and me when we headed out to the Daisy Club: “Good luck, boys, just don’t fuck up!”

  Up until 1975, I always heeded those warnings. There was nothing I wouldn’t do to get the jump on my opponents. Because there was usually only one court available in the places we were playing on tour, I would rise at five in the morning to get an hour of practice in. I’d call up one of my buddies—Spencer, Schneider, or, later, John Lloyd—and ask them to come meet me before anyone else was even awake. From nine o’clock on you would be lucky to get 15 minutes on your own before someone else was trying to muscle their way onto the court. At 6 a.m. we would have the court to ourselves. By the time my opponents were eating breakfast, I knew I already had an advantage over them. But after the Laver challenge, none of that was happening. Tennis stopped being my priority, and, boy, did I pay the price for it.

  I began to come home from a night out at five in the morning. I was sleeping all day, feeling groggy, and drinking more than I should. My diet didn’t help, either. Even at the best of times, breakfast was usually a Pepsi and a Snickers bar. Eating healthy just wasn’t my style. If you’re not working all that sugar off in practice, it doesn’t take long for it to catch up with you, and I was losing the battle of the bulge.

  Following the success of the Laver challenge, Bill kept the money train rolling with an encore against Newcombe. It was the perfect match: the two best players in the world, slugging it out for supremacy in Vegas, not to mention revenge for my loss in Australia. No matter how you billed it, this was going to be way bigger than Connors–Laver. Don’t screw up, Jimmy, I told myself. Make sure you’re ready. So how come a couple of weeks before the match I wound up in the hospital suffering from fatigue?

  I first began to feel tired after Boca Raton. At first I laughed off the symptoms—the headaches, the breathlessness, the lethargy—blaming Nasty and Vitas for being such bad influences. But I continued to feel like I’d been rode hard and put away wet, and before long I found myself struggling to get out of bed, let alone play tennis.

  I talked to Bill and we decided what I really needed was a break. I had been on the go constantly for over a year and I was just plain worn out.

  “I’m going to skip the next tournament,” I told him. “I just don’t feel like I’m ready.”

  “Do what you gotta do, Jimmy. I’ll take care of it.”

  So I missed a couple of tournaments. Everyone did from time to time. Playing so many matches back to back is exhausting, whether you feel good or not. It’s when you’re tired or weak that you’re most likely to do yourself real harm, and I wasn’t prepared to risk long-term injury. I knew how I needed to feel to play right, and if I couldn’t meet those standards, it was better for me to take a break. It wasn’t like I was the only guy in the world playing tennis; it just felt like it sometimes.

  Of course the press had a field day with my taking time off. You know how they are. If I burped, it made good copy, so missing an occasional tournament was headline news. I was never happy about having to pull out—I don’t like letting people down—but sometimes you have to put your well-being first.

  At the start of March, I began to worry that it wasn’t just fatigue that was dragging me down, and when I felt pains in my chest one morning right before leaving for an event in Washington, I got spooked. I’ve always had a little bit of an irregular heartbeat, and normally when that happened, I took it as a sign that I needed to get some rest and regain my energy. This time, though, I thought it might be something serious.

  “Bill, I’m canceling the trip to DC and I’m going to the hospital. I think I’m having a heart attack.”

  I called Dr. Earl Woods, whom I’d known for years, and he checked me in to the hospital for a series of tests. When the tests came back, he told me I wasn’t gonna die. But he and the others doctors insisted on keeping me in the hospital for five or six days, just to make sure everything was OK.

  I was diagnosed with mononucleosis, otherwise known as glandular fever, and I was told that the only cure was to stay in bed and rest. I was already doing that, and, boy, was it boring. After a few days of lying around, drinking Pepsi, and watching TV, I thought my head would explode. Luckily, there was a tennis court close to the hospital, and I persuaded the nurses to let me sneak out for an hour a day to jump some rope and hit a few balls. If they had refused, I think I would have leaped out the window. I’m not good at doing nothing.

  The press found out and followed me down to the court. By then I was feeling a lot better. My heart rate was back to normal, but that didn’t stop me from milking the situation. As I was warming up and a small crowd started to gather, I suddenly clutched my chest.

  “Help, someone! I can’t breathe!”

  No one moved.

  “Help, someone! I’m having a heart attack!”

  No one moved.

  So much for my acting chops. Don’t give up the day job, Jimmy.

  I was discharged from the hospital after 10 days. By then, I was almost sane and feeling 100 percent better, but I was way behind where I wanted to be in terms of preparation for Newcombe. I needed to get some match practice—and quick. Bill provided the solution and, as ever, found an angle to go with it.

  “Jimmy, there’s a to
urnament in Denver next week. I can get you in.”

  “Bill, that’s WCT. I’m not exactly their favorite guy. They’ll love telling me to go screw myself, and I don’t want to give them that opportunity.”

  “Are you kidding? Newcombe’s scheduled to play. I know the guys there, Ray Benton and his buddies, and they’ll make some noise to save face, but they’ll let you in. You and Newk in a warm-up match to the main event? Come on!”

  As Bill predicted, Benton rattled his saber, saying he was concerned it was all a publicity stunt and that I was going to leave him stranded at the last minute with some fake injury, so he made me post a $10,000 security bond. Then Newk got upset when the announcement was made of my late entry. He had to win in Denver to overtake Ashe in the WCT rankings, and he didn’t like the idea of me coming along and ruining his party.

  Then, to top it all off, Newcombe pulled out of the tournament, claiming I had no class, trying to force my way in. What? Winning my qualifying matches had gotten me into the tournament. Can you imagine the number one player in the world having to qualify? Bobby Kreiss and I even entered the doubles—the practice was what I was looking for—and in the singles I beat Brian Gottfried in the finals. I left Denver ready and eager for the Newcombe match. I couldn’t wait to get to Las Vegas.

  As usual, Bill had been right. The ruckus in Colorado was just the thing to light the fuse ahead of the Caesars Palace match. Connors–Newcombe had become an even hotter ticket. Newcombe might have skipped town in Denver, but he couldn’t hide forever.

  Everyone expected the sparks to fly when I arrived on the Strip, but I like to keep people guessing about what’s coming next. So I stayed polite and quiet all week, keeping a low profile, even showering and changing in my hotel so I could stay clear of any locker-room tension. I was saving my usual controversial self for the match.

  But first we had to deal with Bill’s obligatory circus. His opening gambit was to attempt to buy all the ringside tickets, saying that the “hometown” support Laver got back in February had been unfair. Our request was refused, probably because the organizers thought I was about 490 friends short of filling those 500 seats.