Jimmy Connors was among the greatest mens tennis players of all time. He won five U.S. Opens as well as winning at Wimbledon and Australia. At one time in the mid-70’s he was the number one ranked player for 160 consecutive weeks. 

But he was known as well for his on court behavior as he was for his accomplishments. New York Times writer James Kaplan (Aug. 23, 2013) described it this way:

“He strutted combatively; he pointed fingers. His displays often crossed the bounds of good taste — he knew better than anyone how to exploit the phallic possibilities of a racket…”

Connors had a long career.  While he stopped playing full time in 1991 he did not fully retire until 1996 when he was 43 years old. In 1992 he competed in the much ballyhooed “Battle of the Sexes” against Martina Navratilova. That same year he competed in the Carolina Tennis Shoot-Out exhibition in Chapel Hill with the McEnroe brothers, a benefit for the American Heart Association. In 1993 he was a primary organizer of the Champions Tour for over-35 mens players. It included several other former champions including John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg.

He also made a brief foray into coaching. Top American player Andy Roddick was one of his clients. Connors coached him for 19 months in 2007 and 2008.   He then had a brief stint working with women’s star Maria Sharapova. Very brief. After Sharapova lost her first match under Connors tutelage she put an end to the 34-day long engagement.

In 2015 he played an exhibition match against Aaron Krickstein, reprising their famous 1991 dual at the U.S. Open. Steven Wine of the Augusta Chronicle covered that event (Feb.10, 2015).

“Before the match, Connors said it would be his last in public because his hips make it difficult for him to play competitively. He hadn’t competed in front of a crowd in two years. And while he took the court looking fit, he also looked ready for retirement.”

Did Connors mellow out in his retirement? There’s some evidence of that. After the falling out with Sharapova, Kaplan commented in the New York Times: “Connors, showing a side of himself that no one who watched him in his prime would recognize, tweeted from Santa Barbara, Calif., a few days after the loss: ‘Back home in SB — family, pups, and home cooking. Oh — I forgot, and a vodka on the rocks.’”

In covering the exhibition with Krickstein, Wine noted that “Connors willingly played the bad-boy role for much of his career, but the exhibition was a lovefest, and he was on his best country club behavior.”

Steve Tignor, writing in tennis.com (May 20, 2013) recalled catching up with Connors at the Peninsula Hotel as he was promoting his autobiography ‘The Outsider.”

“…he didn’t look out of place among the spiffy tourists and businessmen sipping $20 gin and tonics. Connors was in a dark blue suit himself, and while his hair was edged with gray, none of it was out of place. Listening to him quietly answer questions that he must have been asked 10 times already that day, it was hard to imagine that this was the same man who, 20-odd years ago, had gyrated his way to the semifinals of the U.S. Open in short-shorts at age 39.”

But all was not sweetness and light with Connors, and the aforementioned autobiography told some of that story.

– That ‘Battle of the Sexes’ match? Connors bet $1 million on himself. “Betting on myself was the ultimate gambler’s high. I was out of control and I didn’t realize it, though that bet should have been a big-assed hint.” (tennis.com May 16, 2013)

– That wasn’t the only thing he bet on. “…he would, as he says, ‘piss away’ an untold fortune on sports betting, until Patti finally staged an intervention and sent him to Gambler’s Anonymous.” (tennis.com May 20, 2013)

– Patti is his wife. They’ve been married since 1979. In The Outsider he acknowledges “an affair he had that was so public he even brought the woman to meet his mother in Illinois. Patti took him back, despite his infidelity. ‘I think that it’s been written many times that Patti Connors was a saint to put up with Jimmy Connors.’” (Today, May 7, 2013).

But the part of the autobiography that drew the most attention was his revealing that his engagement with Chris Evert, an equally accomplished tennis star on the women’s side, was broken off after she had an abortion. He apparently had no say in the matter. She apparently had no say in the decision to make it public. Her reaction was what you might expect.

The autobiography, while shedding some light on Connors’ post-tennis life, was less than critically acclaimed. Tim Adams of the Guardian (May 27, 2013) offered this review:

“His book is mostly written in this testosterone-induced spirit. More than once, for example, he tells his gentle reader to ‘fuck off’. The Outsider has little of the tortured introspection of the best example of the genre, Andre Agassi’s Open, or the self-aware wit of McEnroe’s Serious. In its place is an examination of a legendary American pugnaciousness, which veers often, authentically, into boorishness or sentimentality.”

At 72, Connors is no longer out on the court and he never revived his short coaching career. But he still has lots of opinions about what is going on in the sport and he freely offers them on his podcast Advantage Connors where he shares the microphone with his son Brett Connors. In recent episodes he has ruminated about the possible suspension of current top-ranked player Jannick Sinner, the ‘breakdown’ of Rafael Nadal’s body, and Novak Djokovic’ poor play in the U.S. Open.

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See also:

Whatever Happened To? Jennifer Capriati