The Outsider: A Memoir (11 page)

The year before, I’d discovered a place called the Civil Service Sports Club, by the River Thames near Chiswick Bridge, a few miles from Wimbledon. Spencer and I drove up to the clubhouse; we could see about 20 courts in pretty good shape, and they were all empty. It looked perfect. We asked the guy in charge if it would be OK if we used a court to practice.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” he said. “I’ll have to check if we have any free.”

OK, I thought, I’m willing to play that game.

After five minutes of looking through pieces of paper in his tiny office, he came back and pointed to a court way out in the back, with ruts and bare patches in the grass. After checking it out, we considered ourselves lucky to have lines and a net.

“What are you charging?” I asked.

“Twelve pounds an hour.”

I paid, we played, and I told the guy that we’d be back around the same time tomorrow.

“I’ll see what I can sort out for you, sir,” he said.

By the next day, I think he had realized who we were and directed us toward a better court—one that I knew wasn’t going to cost us just 12 pounds.

“Thank you. How much?” I asked.

“This one is premium rate. One hundred pounds an hour, sir.”

What a surprise. Did he think he could take advantage of me because I only had an eighth-grade education? I wasn’t that stupid. But we didn’t have much choice. We shook hands on the deal, and after our practice, we talked to him again.

“OK, buddy, let’s get one thing straight here. I plan on being around for a while, but I’m not coming back if it’s going to cost a hundred pounds an hour. Can we figure out a price for the rest of my stay?”

“The problem is, sir, with the way you two play, you’re tearing up the grass, and it’s very expensive to repair.”

“Fair enough. How about this: We agree on a daily rate right now that covers everything. That way, if we do screw up the surface a little, you won’t be bitching at us.”

We settled on 75 pounds. How generous . . . of both of us.

On our third visit it was raining, but not enough to stop us. We went out to practice and after an hour the court had turned to mud. We knew the guy was going to go nuts when he saw the state of the grass, so we made a quick exit, poking our heads into his office on our way out to the car: “Thank you, see you next year.”

He must have known something was up, because by the time we were driving out of the parking lot, he was chasing after us, cursing at us in a Cockney accent the likes of which we’d never heard.

“If I catch you out ’ere again, you short-assed Yankee twat, I’ll shove that girlie racquet of yours so far up that little poof’s arse of yours, you won’t know whether you’re shitting or playing mixed fucking doubles.”

Needless to say, we didn’t return to the Civil Service Sports Club in 1974. We came across some courts by accident in the nice residential area of Holland Park. Schneider and I had been given directions at our hotel desk to a place that could string my racquets, but we got lost. All the streets seemed to look identical and have the same name, but as we drove around we spotted a small club hidden away behind some trees. It had four private courts, for local residents only. We pleaded our case, and from then on, Holland Park became the perfect place for me to practice during Wimbledon.

Wimbledon and Jimmy Connors wasn’t exactly a match made in tennis heaven. Over the years we clashed more than once over what I saw as their stiff, old-fashioned rules. The crowds at Wimbledon took a long time to warm to me. To them I was an arrogant, crude American kid who had no respect for the traditions of their tournament, and they were right. But we eventually came to an understanding and even grew to appreciate each other.

Although Wimbledon wasn’t my “cup of tea,” there were a lot of elements of the tournament that I enjoyed. Centre Court was a wonderful theater for tennis, despite the unpredictable bounce of the grass, and I loved walking around the outside courts and mingling with the fans, who took so much pride in feeling a part of the championships.

But it came at a price. As well as all that grass, there were more than two miles of hedges at the All-England Club, acres of flowerbeds and trees, and for me that added up to one thing during an English summer: pollen.

Ivan Lendl once said he couldn’t play Wimbledon because he was allergic to grass. Maybe he was, and maybe that’s why he never won the tournament, but it’s strange how it didn’t seem to affect him on a golf course. I get serious hay fever, but I never used it as an excuse. I wasn’t looking for an alibi and I didn’t need one.

When I was young and training with Pop, he taught me how to breathe through my nose. As an ex-boxer, he knew that opening your mouth to take a breath was not only dangerous (because your jaw is a lot more vulnerable if it isn’t closed); it was also an indication of fatigue, and you don’t want to give your opponent any sort of boost by thinking that you’re tired. Breathing through your nose increases your mobility, because once you’ve mastered it, you can take constant breaths, drawing oxygen at a steady level. If you breathe through your mouth, you tend to hold your breath when you’re tense, which slows you down.

Pop worked hard with me on this part of my training. It’s common practice today, but back then it was almost unheard of. During long rallies I breathed in and out through my nose to maintain my energy levels. When I needed to explode into a shot, I exhaled sharply through my mouth. This produced a well-known side effect: the grunt. It’s been said that I was the first tennis player to grunt—I don’t know if that’s true or not—but I sure was the highest-profile player at the time to do it. I wasn’t consciously trying to put anyone off; it was just a byproduct of how I had been taught to breathe.

The trouble with breathing through my nose was that it caused my allergy symptoms to increase tenfold. It was brutal. I eventually found a steroid shot which worked for me, but for a long time I had to use spray to clear my sinuses. It’s crazy how an innocent thing like that can be turned into something really outrageous. One guy wrote a book on tennis in which he insinuated that I was doing cocaine at Wimbledon in 1980; he said that my nose spray, which I used at the changeovers, contained more than a decongestant.

Total bullshit. I have never taken cocaine in my life. That guy is a dishonest prick and he knows who he is.

That summer at Wimbledon I had a far-from-easy ride through to the finals. The truth is that the surface didn’t really suit my game, and I was still learning how different playing on grass could be. I knew I had to change my game, at least a little, if I was going to win Wimbledon. Many of my opponents were more experienced on grass. I was still predominantly a baseliner; I was more aggressive than I had been as a teenager but still happy to rely on my groundstrokes.

To counteract Wimbledon’s uneven bounces, I adopted the high-risk tactic of volleying three quarters of the way back from the net, in an area tennis coaches call “no man’s land.” Playing in “no man’s land” on grass means putting yourself in a tough spot—you’re more vulnerable to passing shots—but by taking the ball out of the air, I was being more assertive. I also mixed up my game in a way that surprised many people, coming to the net more often, just as Pancho had taught me.

“Go for their ankles with your returns, Jimbo, and when you see them out of position, move in for the kill.”

It paid off in 1974, but sometimes only barely. My second-round opponent, Phil Dent, was out for revenge after Melbourne, and at Wimbledon we went the distance over two days before I eventually won 10-8 in the fifth. In the quarters I faced the defending champion, Jan Kodes, who also pushed me to five sets; and in the semis, Dick Stockton won the first set 6-4 before I pulled my game together to win in four.

The day before my final against Ken Rosewall, the first half of the Love Double was completed when Chrissie again beat Olga Morozova, 6-0, 6-4 this time. She was thrilled—we both were—and she wanted to celebrate, but Pancho put his foot down. The weather forecast for the finals was for temperatures in the nineties, and Pancho was determined that nothing was going to sap my stamina. He was no fool, and that night he slept on a chair in my hotel room, keeping a watchful eye on me, so I would be ready for my final.

Pancho later told me that Chrissie had come to my room that night.

“Darling Chrissie,” he explained, “you have just won the tournament, but Jimmy, he still has to play. He needs his rest. After he beats Rosewall, you can have him on toast.”

Pancho has such a way with words.

I didn’t think for a moment that I could lose that final, even though it seemed as though almost the entire tennis world was against me. I was a spoiler and no one likes a spoiler, especially one who causes a lot of trouble.

Ken Rosewall was the epitome of the gentleman player, and he was a great one at that. He was very popular, and he was in his fourth and probably his last Wimbledon final, the only Slam that he hadn’t won. All the fans on Centre Court were rooting for Rosewall; except maybe for Pancho, Bill, Mom, and Chrissie, who I was pretty sure were on my side. I understood Rosewall’s emotional relationship with the crowd, but I had to take my chance. What if I never got another opportunity to win Wimbledon?

The match itself is a blur. Everything fell into place. I got on top early and never felt under threat, and it seemed like I had all the time in the world. In fact, I reached a state close to tennis nirvana that day. That’s how I felt about the match then, and it’s how I feel now. Incredibly, the same thing occurred a couple of months later, when I played Rosewall again, in New York, in the finals of the US Open.

Being able to play almost perfect tennis for an entire match is incredible, make no mistake about it. I’ve also been on the receiving end, when an opponent attained the same level. Take a look at the list of the shortest Wimbledon finals ever: I think I’m on top in the Open Era. It only took McEnroe 80 minutes to beat me in 1984: 6-1, 6-1, 6-2.

On the championship point against Rosewall at Wimbledon, I served deep, and he couldn’t handle the return. It was over, I had done it, although I had no understanding of what that really meant at the time. When I jumped over the net to shake hands with Ken, I was in an ecstatic fog. Even with that famous trophy in my hands, I didn’t really grasp what I had done. I was crazy happy, but the fact that my life had just changed forever did not register with me at the time. Winning Wimbledon and the US Open were the reasons why I became a tennis professional.

Try to imagine what it was like in those moments directly after my first Wimbledon victory. I was in a daze, and I was told what to do, where to go, and whom to speak to. It was Wimbledon and they had their protocols and commitments.

“Walk over there, Mr. Connors, to the photographers.”

“Now walk around the court, present the cup to the crowd.”

“Over here, Mr. Connors. The BBC has to interview you.”

“When that’s over, you’ll speak to these newspaper reporters here.”

During the chaos, my dad called to congratulate me. I didn’t know about it until afterward, and a lot has been made about that phone call over the years by my critics in the press, about how I couldn’t be bothered to talk to my dad after winning Wimbledon. It didn’t happen like that at all.

I loved my dad, even though we weren’t as close as we might have been under different circumstances. Tennis wasn’t one of his interests, and although he approved of my dedication, he had nothing to contribute to my training in the way Mom, Two-Mom, and Pop did. What my dad did give me was the freedom to follow my dream, and he worked his whole life to help support that. No matter what, he was always proud of me.

We spoke later, and he told me that he’d watched the finals and was happy about how all my hard work had paid off. I was glad he called, and those people who read more into it should mind their own business and fuck off.

In the car on the way back to the Inn on the Park to change for the Champions Ball, at the Grosvenor House hotel, it finally hit me. I had just won Wimbledon. This was different from any other tournament. This was life-changing. All those questions that had been asked, that I had asked myself—
Could Connors do it on the biggest stage? Was he good enough?
—had been answered. At the same time, it felt like the show was suddenly over. It was a strange sensation, the letdown. I had the Wimbledon trophy in my hands, but within a day or two I would have to start to work on getting the only other one that really mattered to me, the US Open.

The Champions Ball was nice, if a little stuffy. Chrissie and I danced some, but where we really wanted to be was out on the town. After the Playboy Club, we moved on to Annabel’s nightclub, and Chrissie called it a night long before I did. I knew a lot of people in London after hanging around town over the past two years with Pancho, Spencer, and Nasty. It was time to catch up with my friends and have some fun.

My plan was to go straight home after London and catch up on some sleep in order to be fully rested and prepared for Team Tennis. A lot of the top guys were playing in it, and I saw it as a good way to practice before the US Open.

Riordan had other plans: “You have an appointment in New York, Jimmy.”

At JFK, Bill had a car waiting. It dropped us outside of a Midtown hospital, at the children’s cancer ward. I went from thinking I was on a pedestal, after winning Wimbledon, back down to earth in less than a second. This was going to be a reality check, and if I’m being honest, at first I was annoyed.

“Come on, Bill, could we have waited a day or so to do this?”

Then I walked through those doors and I understood. Right in front of me, in row upon row of beds, was the fragility of life and a real demonstration of how lucky I was. This was a stark reminder to me to be grateful for what I had.

“Enjoy your success, Jimmy,” Bill said to me. “Enjoy the rewards, work hard, but remember what else is happening in the world.”

Walking out of the hospital that day changed my perspective on what was really important, and it was an experience I’ll never forget.