Jimmy Connors
Jimmy Connors
James Scott "Jimmy" Connors is an American former world No. 1 tennis player, often considered among the greatest in the history of the sport. He held the top ranking for a then-record 160 consecutive weeks from July 29, 1974 to August 22, 1977 and an additional eight times during his career for a total of 268 weeks. He also held a year-end top ten ranking for an Open Era record 16 years...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAthlete
Date of Birth2 September 1952
CountryUnited States of America
I've been waiting for a project that grabbed my attention and this is it. The DVD will reflect the attitude and passion that I put into the way I played tennis.
It was like bulls banging heads. He brought out the best and the worst in me and I like to think I did the same with him. Jimmy is one of the greatest players that ever lived, in my opinion. He's like the Pete Rose of tennis. I never seen a guy try as hard as this person on a tennis court. That's something I really respected.
It's a youth-driven sport. There's no doubt about it, like all sports. But tennis is exceptional in throwing away the old and shuffling in the new, sometimes even before their time on both sides.
I would watch Gonzalez play and he mesmerized you. It would be like looking into the flame of a fire. You know you couldn't take your eyes off him because you never knew what he would do next.
Every time I went out there I performed the best that I could and it was time to step back and clear my mind.
Was I as close to my dad as with my mom? No, of course not. Is my daughter as close with me as she is with my wife? No, of course not.
Playing in front of 25,000 people and millions more on television, and performing and doing what I worked so hard to try to accomplish was, in my opinion, the ultimate. Do I miss it? Of course I do.
Playing in front of 25,000 people and millions more on television, and performing and doing what I worked so hard to try to accomplish was, in my opinion, the ultimate. Do I miss it? Of course I do.
You have to remember that I played longer than anybody else on the main tour; I played until I was 40, and then played another six years or so on the seniors tour.
But why should I read what somebody else thinks of my life when I know the real story?
It was okay for Wayne Gretzky's dad, for instance, to give him a hockey stick, or Joe Montana's dad to give him a football, or Larry Bird's dad to give him a basketball, but it wasn't okay for Gloria Connors to give her son a tennis racquet.
People don't seem to understand that it's a damn war out there.
I think my greatest victory was every time I walked out there, I gave it everything I had. I left everything out there. That's what I'm most proud of. I can't go win Wimbledon anymore, so if what I've done in the past is not good enough, let it go. Because I'm certainly not sitting around thinking about it.
No, like I said, my dad was never really part of the tennis. His involvement around what I did with the tennis and with my mom and my grandparents was really not a part of my life.