The Outsider: A Memoir

by Jimmy Connors

  He fought hard to the very end, saving two match points before a crosscourt forehand won me the championship for the fifth time.

  I acknowledged the absolutely incredible New York fans as they cheered and chanted, “Jim-eee! Jim-eee!” I walked very slowly to the net to shake Ivan’s hand, not because of my painful toe, but because I wanted to milk this moment for everything it was worth.

  It would be eight years before I was able to experience this feeling again.

  I think, of all my wins, this 100th was probably the sweetest. I wanted to have that US Open title just one more time.

  As I listened to the applause in my stadium, from my New Yorkers, I knew that I had turned a corner. I still had work ahead of me to rebuild my relationship with Patti, but it was work I was looking forward to doing. Life was good.

  I would never play a Grand Slam final again.

  17

  ROAD WARRIOR

  Come on, Connors. We’re late already.”

  “No, I can’t go yet.”

  “Come on! Everyone’s waiting for you. Let’s hit the road.”

  “Screw you, G. I’m not going anywhere yet.”

  It’s January 1984 and I’m sitting in Nasty’s apartment in Manhattan during the Masters. Gerry Goldberg and Ilie are here, together with their wives and Patti. We’ve got dinner reservations and they want to get going. I’m not moving. Why?

  Because Bill Laimbeer, of the Detroit Pistons, is on the free throw line, time has expired, and he’s shooting two. I need them both to win my bet.

  I’m leaning forward in my seat, staring intensely at the TV screen, palms sweating, heart racing.

  “Connors! The car is waiting downstairs. You can find out the score later.”

  It’s not about the score. It’s about this moment, as addictive as any drug.

  Boom! The first one’s good. If he’d missed, I’d be screwed and could walk away, the money gone. But now . . .

  The ball’s in the air.

  He knocks it down! It’s over. Winning or losing a couple of grand doesn’t affect me one way or the other. But the rush, man, that is what it’s about.

  I walk out the door feeling an emotional letdown. My adrenaline is suddenly gone. All I can think is what an asshole I am for waiting for that schmuck to sink a free throw just because I’ve got a bet on it.

  Although Patti and I were becoming closer than ever before, my gambling, which had always been a little excessive, was starting to slip out of my control.

  John McEnroe won the 1984 Wimbledon final in 80 minutes, beating me 6-1, 6-1, 6-2. I was getting my ass kicked in front of 15,000 people and millions more on TV. I tried different things that might rattle Mac enough to get me back in the match. Nothing worked. Mac simply played better than me. On days like that you just say screw it and move on to the next tournament.

  But this particular match stands out to me for a couple of reasons—other than getting crushed in one of the shortest finals ever. One, it turned out to be my last appearance in a Grand Slam final. Two, it was the first I’d played with a midsize racquet.

  I’d hung onto my T2000 through my 1983 US Open victory, even though almost everyone else on the tour had long since been using the new generation of oversize or midsize graphites. But I couldn’t ignore the fact that by sticking with the T2000 I was giving too much away.

  Wilson had officially stopped making my racquet years before but had kept unofficially making them for me. Once I made the decision to give up my T2000, I had a word with Wilson to see what they could do for me. Generous as ever, they applied modern technology to my requirements and produced a racquet that became known as the Pro Staff.

  I found the transition tough, I went from a racquet with lots of movement to a frame that felt as stiff as a board. Wilson said the new racquets had been made exactly with the same specs I had before, but they weren’t. The difference in material and the way it played and felt in my hand had no resemblance to the steel racquet that I had used throughout my whole career. The ball didn’t fly off the racquet; it required too much effort on my part to generate the pace that I was looking for.

  I had been using my same strokes for so long that changing them was out of the question; they were part of my muscle memory. So I worked hard to integrate the new racquet into my existing game. In January 1985, at the US Indoors in Memphis, I alternated between the two racquets in my semifinal loss to Edberg. I stuck with the Pro Staff for my next tournament, the Pilot Pen Classic at La Quinta, where I lost in the quarterfinals to Greg Holmes. So much for the Pro Staff experiment. There was nothing wrong with the racquet; it just didn’t work for me, and I went back to my T2000.

  I knew Wilson wasn’t going to produce any more T2000s, so for the next two years I used up the 10 or so frames I had left. Eventually, I had to accept that my T2000 couldn’t compete with the new technology, and I went with Slazenger for their Panther Pro Ceramic. And I thought the Pro Staff was too stiff! This one was even tougher for me to play with, and even though I worked with Slazenger to try to make it better, it just didn’t fit. I wasted a lot of time that I didn’t have trying to find a racquet that suited me. I finally settled on Prince’s single-throated Mono during my time on the Champions Tour. It’s the racquet I still use today, the fastest I’ve come across since the T2000. Of course, I wish I had found it sooner—some results could have been different.

  A word about technological advances in tennis: I think the racquets players use today make a lot of them look and play better than they actually are. Add to that all the other advantages available now, like the high-tech machines to build strength and fitness, scientifically tested diets to increase stamina, line calls that are far more accurate than ever before (which can be regularly challenged without risking a warning or penalty point—jeez, that’s no fun), slow grass, fast clay, trainers allowed on court when the players have an itch, permission to disappear to the locker room for a “comfort break” as many times as they want—man, they have everything they need. Anything else we can do for you? Room service?

  I’m not denying the greatness of guys like Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic, but some of the other players have reached exceptional levels of expertise that they wouldn’t have attained without technology unavailable to my generation. It amounts to this: Today players are given every opportunity to advance in the game without having to know the basic fundamentals and technique, like using your imagination, working the whole court to your advantage, and shot-making skills. The players today are all taught to play the same way, with power being the main objective. The new equipment allows them the luxury of playing one way, and getting by with that. But that’s just my opinion. I’ve been wrong ONCE before.

  In 1984, Mac and I spent a lot of time together. Not all of it was fun.

  Losses in Dallas in April (final, straight sets), Roland Garros in June (semis, straight sets), Queen’s Club in June (semis, straight sets), Toronto in August (semis, three sets), and of course Wimbledon were topped off by defeat at the Open, again in the semis.

  At least in New York I took him to five sets in what a lot of people regard as a classic match, but really, so what? I got beat; that’s all I cared about and I was starting to get really pissed. The explosion wasn’t far off.

  Throughout the year Mac and I had also had the pleasure of each other’s company as Davis Cup teammates.

  I’m pretty sure he enjoyed it about as much as I did.

  I had signed with Donald Dell’s ProServ agency in 1982 after a year with IMG. Donald saw the Davis Cup as an exercise in brand-building as much as anything else. He thought flying the US flag would be good for business and I went along with it. I really shouldn’t have, but I liked Donald, so I took his advice.

  After my bad Davis Cup experience of 1972 and the disappointment of losing in Mexico in 1975, I’d only played one other tie, the quarters in 1981 against Czechoslovakia, where I won both my matches (including a straight-sets victory over Lendl). I should have left it right there
. Let’s face it, having Mac and me on the same team in 1984 was never a great idea.

  Mac had won the Davis Cup four times already, and if I’d been thinking straight, I would have wished him good luck and watched the matches on TV. Instead, I joined up and there were problems from the get-go. He was whipping my ass (and pretty much everyone else’s), and that didn’t sit well with me.

  We were barely talking to each other at our first match, in February in Romania. The others just tried to keep out of our way and hope for the best. The captain, Arthur Ashe, didn’t help matters by ignoring us and letting our issues fester. It made for a tense atmosphere, not exactly ideal for team competition.

  To top it off, we were given instructions on how to treat Nasty! He’d already played over a hundred Davis Cup matches for Romania, we all knew him, and he was a friend but we were supposed to see him as the enemy. I wasn’t allowed to talk to him and they even banned his wife, who was from the US, from our locker room. I mean, come on. That’s one of the things I really didn’t like about Davis Cup. It was OK for the team to set itself apart to a certain extent, but to ignore one of my best buddies off the court? Seriously?

  So big surprise. I ignored the rules. To me, this was a nice vacation where I could visit with my old friend Nasty and play some tennis while I was at it. Patti, Gerry Goldberg, and his wife were with me on the trip, and in the evenings we’d go out to dinner with Nasty and his wife. We also went to Nasty’s home, where he and his family entertained us in grand style so we’d have a memorable experience in his home country.

  Nasty had so many obligations that he wasn’t able to perform at the level he wanted, and we won the match comfortably. In the fourth rubber I got to play my good friend in a match in front of his home crowd. And, boy, did he put on a show. His shot-making was like the Nasty of old, and the warm way he treated his fans and drew his countrymen into the match made me realize why he was the superstar that he had become. Of course, it meant that 8,000 people weren’t rooting for me, only this time I was happy to let Nasty enjoy the spotlight.

  Next up was a quarterfinal against Argentina, played in Atlanta, where I showed up at the last minute so I didn’t have to hang around the team any longer than necessary, followed by the semis against Australia.

  The finals took place in Sweden—and I should never have gone to that match.

  I had a lot going on in my life outside of tennis. Patti, Brett, and I had just moved from Florida to a ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley, above Santa Barbara, California, a place that was ideal for raising our children. Yes, children. Patti was very pregnant with our daughter, Aubree, but on her due date I was scheduled to be in Sweden.

  I should have bowed out. I could have said, “Look, I have family obligations and I need to be home. I’m happy to let someone else take my place.” But when I raised the possibility of skipping the match, back came the emotional blackmail.

  “You gotta play, Jimmy. We need you. Think of your country.”

  Tennis or family? Family or tennis? It’s an issue I’ve struggled with over and over in the second half of my career. This time, I made the wrong call, and instead of staying with Patti, I went to Sweden.

  I’ll admit I didn’t have the best attitude. When I said I’d go, I was ignoring one of Pancho’s rules. “You don’t play if you are injured. If you play, you are not injured.” If I was going to be there with the team, I should have been prepared to be there with the team 100 percent.

  It went downhill from there.

  There had been a schedule change for the first practice session that I wasn’t told about, so when I arrived on the court, I was the only one there. I was pissed. I mean, really pissed. My approach has always been that when it’s time for tennis, it’s time for tennis. When Ashe finally showed up, I let him know how I felt about the situation. With my racquet I wrote FUCK OFF ARTIE in the clay. I made sure he noticed before scrubbing it out.

  Sweden in December is cold and wet, so we were indoors on a newly built court, which suited the Swedes a whole lot better than it did us. It was probably the slowest clay court I’ve ever played on. My opening match was against Mats Wilander, A French Open champion and one of the world’s best clay-court specialists, and I knew before I even stepped on the court that it wasn’t going to be my day. I wasn’t disappointed. Along the way, my attitude had deteriorated and the result wasn’t pretty: smashed racquets, verbal abuse, point penalties, game penalties. It was a bad scene. I should have been defaulted immediately; maybe that’s what I was hoping for, but this was the Davis Cup final and that didn’t happen.

  We lost 4-1 and I was gone before the end, after Mac and Peter Fleming lost their doubles to give the Swedes an unbeatable 3-0 lead.

  Leaving when I did was about the only smart thing I did in Sweden. I was able to miss the now infamous closing-ceremony dinner, where Jimmy Arias talked throughout the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and Mac and the other guys left before Hunter Delatour, the new USTA president, had given his speech. After seeing his own country’s players walk out on him, Delatour hit the team with both barrels (yahoo!), calling our behavior and attitude in the competition unpatriotic and claiming we were an embarrassment to our country. For years I’ve been trying to tell them I shouldn’t play Davis Cup. If only they had listened.

  Then it got ugly. There were calls for Mac and me to be banned from Davis Cup, and the sponsors, Louisiana-Pacific Corporation, threatened to withdraw their support unless a code of conduct was imposed on the players in the future, which it was. Eventually we had to make public apologies, and as far as I was concerned, that was it. Since Two-Mom’s death, the Davis Cup felt jinxed for me. I’d never play it again and I’m sure no one was too upset.

  Back in Los Angeles, Patti and I got ready for the birth of our daughter. Her official due date was December 25, a Christmas baby, but we knew Aubree would be delivered by C-section, as had Brett, so we could choose Aubree’s birthday. We didn’t want Brett to be separated from his mother on Christmas day, so we picked December 20.

  On December 19, Dr. Lloyd Greig met Patti and me at the hospital, where she was signed in and taken up to her room. Then Doc and I left to watch a Lakers game, on which I’d placed one of the biggest bets of my life. Brenda Richie, Lionel’s wife, arrived at the hospital that night with a bottle of wine and a backgammon board to keep Patti company.

  “I can’t drink, Brenda,” Patti told her. “I’m having a baby in the morning.”

  They stayed up and played backgammon until 1:30 in the morning. I arrived later that morning and they took Patti into the operating room.

  With Brett, there had been some complications, so I had stayed by Patti’s head during the surgery, but with Aubree, I was down there—up close and very personal—watching the entire thing.

  “Now I know you inside and out,” I told Patti later.

  Aubree Leigh Connors was born at 9:51 a.m., December 20, 1984. She was a fragile little thing with, nothing like Brett’s impressive set of lungs. Aubree just let out these tiny cries that sounded like a kitten mewing.

  “Is she OK?” I asked the doctor over and over, even though they kept reassuring me that she was healthy and fine, a perfect, beautiful little redhead. And I fell in love with my family all over again.

  During the 1970s, the exhibition matches and special events that Nasty and I played became our main source of income. Tennis was still in its rapid growth phase, and the various associations still hadn’t realized that they would also have to offer bigger prize money. Even though it slowly went up, it didn’t happen in time for the guys of my generation.

  From a financial point of view, the Slams—particularly Wimbledon and the Open—were important; win one of those and the price you could command for exhibitions went through the roof. Tennis was my love and I respected it, but it was also my job. Exhibition guarantees—payments and expenses to sweeten the deal—started appearing around the early to mid-’70s. We were committed to playing a dozen or more tournaments
, plus the Slams, but we could choose from among over 80 sanctioned Grand Prix events on the tour, but which ones? That’s where the guarantees came in.

  The ATP and USTA were against guarantees. In 1983, they tried to make an example of Guillermo Vilas by fining him $20,000 and imposing a year ban after he supposedly received money to play at a tournament in Rotterdam. Mac, Lendl, and I came out publicly in favor of guarantees, which might have helped Vilas, because although his fine was upheld when he appealed, his suspension was dropped.

  Of course, I never saw a problem with guarantees; to me, it was no different from paying Sinatra to play a concert. People wanted to hear him sing, they bought tickets, and the promoters and venues all made money. Why should tennis, or any other professional sport, be different? We’re all in the entertainment business, aren’t we? I never understood why the authorities made a stink, but they did. We just kept it quiet and they turned a blind eye. Or did they just accept it? The fans got to see the guys they wanted, the tour continued to be exciting, and everyone was happy. No big deal. But, look here: Just because I was getting a big guarantee didn’t mean that winning the tournament wasn’t still my top priority.

  Today players don’t need the guarantees (even though they still get them), because they earn so much in prize money and endorsements. The schedule allows them to take weeks off at a time. In my era, we had to cash in while we could. Win a Slam and within a day you’d be back on the road, making a living.

  I didn’t want to admit it, but by the mid-’80s my career had peaked, and I was on the down elevator. I figured it was time to build up my retirement fund and let me tell you, I had some fun doing it.

  Over the next seven years, through 1990, I was on an airplane, flying all over the world to grab any opportunity I was offered. It took its toll, but it was worth it. I was able to experience new cities, cultures, food, and I was being paid to do what I loved. By the way, I was also still active on the main tour throughout this period. Out of the 13 Grand Slams I entered between 1985 and the end of 1989, I made five semis and three quarters and remained in the world top 10 through 1988.