In another attempt to see more of Chrissie (and because I was on the road all the time, anyway), I even moved to a hotel in Florida near her house. We would hit balls together whenever I was there, and I saw it as a positive move, but Mom disagreed, probably with good reason. Choosing Chrissie over, say, Spencer for practice sessions was a one-sided deal. Chrissie’s game improved while mine didn’t. Hitting with me was good for her—the pace of my shots helped quicken her reactions—but not me. Before a tournament, I’d have to take a few extra days to practice with the guys and get used to the speed and power again. Mom found that hard to deal with and made little attempt to hide her feelings, causing yet more tension between Chrissie and me, which we really didn’t need.
In November 1974, Chrissie and I both won the singles at the South African Open, in Johannesburg. This was during the apartheid regime, and because Arthur Ashe was the first black athlete to be given a visa to play in the country, the press interest in him was insane. They followed him everywhere, shoving microphones in his face and demanding a comment on every political issue. Arthur stayed cool throughout the whole tournament, but how he managed to concentrate on tennis I’ll never know.
Understandably, Arthur was desperate to win in South Africa, maybe more so than in any other tournament. I later read that he had identified the weaknesses in my game that he intended to exploit. They were as follows:
My serve. (I’ll give him that—it was only as good as it needed to be.)
My forehand. (Only in comparison with my backhand, which was only the best in the game. Quiet—this is my book.)
Shots with no pace. (People always said that, but I never saw it as a weakness.)
My overhead. (Just because I’m short? I resent that.)
Ashe’s mistake was to underestimate my groundstrokes, just as he had in Boston, and I blew him away in three straight sets for my 17th tournament win. With so many weaknesses, I sure won a lot.
That South African trip was important to me for another reason. There was no better place in the world to buy a diamond engagement ring. Of course, back then we didn’t know anything about blood diamonds.
I’d been thinking about proposing to Chrissie for a few weeks. Yeah, I know, with both of us finding it hard to be in the same place for more than five minutes, and with our extracurricular activities, it hardly sounds like a good way to start a life together. But I honestly felt that once we were engaged, things would be different. I was so naïve.
There were obvious problems. As a married couple, we couldn’t keep doing what we had been doing, letting tennis dominate our lives. And what if we started a family? Would Chrissie keep playing? How would I feel about that? Something or someone had to give. I am old-school now and I was old-school then, and in my eyes, I had to be the principal breadwinner in our household. But was that fair to Chrissie? I’m not quitting, I told myself, so why should she? I was trying to look out for both of our interests. One of us had to. But in South Africa, I managed to forget about all those issues. After all, despite everything, she was “The One.” We would spend the rest of our lives together, and somehow we would work it out.
We kept our engagement a secret because I still had to ask Chrissie’s father for permission to marry his daughter. I knew it was a done deal, but I was still nervous as hell when I went down to see him in Fort Lauderdale. Mr. Evert and I spoke for a few minutes behind the closed doors of the Holiday Park Tennis Center pro shop (I didn’t want to wander too far from my comfort zone), and he was very cool about it. I don’t know how happy he was, and I’m pretty sure he was thinking, “Well, this will never happen,” but he gave us his blessing anyway. I was 21 and about to get married.
It’s crazy when I think about it now. Why didn’t we wait a while? Well, why would we? We were in love and we told ourselves that this was the right thing to do.
Throughout the fall of 1973, Pancho had been bombarded with requests—there was even talk of possible inducements such as first-class airline tickets—for me to enter the Australian Open, in December. Frank Sedgman, who played out of Melbourne and had been one of the world’s greatest players in the late 1940s and early 1950s, even lobbied his old buddy Pancho to try to persuade me to go Down Under. With their crazy scheduling—a tournament on the other side of the world over Christmas and New Year’s—the organizers struggled to attract top-class players and had identified me as a valuable draw.
Of course they had. I had 11 titles to my name for the year, I was one half of the most famous couple in tennis, and I was about to be named the number three player in the world, based on the new ATP computer-ranking system. When Pancho explained how much they wanted me there, I thought, why not? Especially since I knew Chrissie had already entered. Christmas in the sunshine with my new fiancée sounded like a good deal.
Australia in December is stupid hot and at times the weather matched my mood. The facilities were basic, to say the least—the Kooyong Stadium had a tiny locker room with a single shower and one toilet cubicle—but that didn’t bother me. I’d been in worse places on the Riordan circuit. No, what pissed me off was the partisan crowd, screaming approval at every hometown player and abuse at every foreigner. Guess who was their main target?
I took the brunt of it; three of the five matches I played to reach my first Grand Slam final were against Aussies. Every time I beat a local hero, the fans roared their disapproval. Who was this upstart American brat hell-bent on ruining their party? Hearing the crowd booing was one thing, but what the hell was the deal with those flies? Where were they breeding those things anyway? They looked like B-52s coming down on me.
Spencer and Chrissie did their best to calm me down, and I know that without them I would have imploded and been on my way home long before I met another Australian, Phil Dent, in the finals. But even Chrissie was getting on my nerves. Nobody was safe. With the organizers usually scheduling me on the court after Chrissie, I would go along to support her, sometimes bringing a sandwich and Pepsi for my lunch. Chrissie didn’t like that one little bit. If she noticed me eating and not paying attention during her match, she would throw me a look, which wasn’t hard to read: “If you’re not going to watch me play, then get out of here.” That pissed me off even more than the hostile Australian fans, because it was embarrassing; everyone in the stadium could see what was going on. Run along, Jimmy, do what you’re told.
We were not even married yet and the tension was already building. I was in Chrissie’s corner, rooting for her, and she was treating me like some sort of, well, househusband. You know how it is, guys: You can’t do anything right. I needed to eat before my matches and I wanted to see her play. What was I supposed to do? Stay back at the hotel and miss her match altogether? I’m sure that would have gone down really well.
Chrissie’s mood swings could drive anyone crazy, but that didn’t change the fact that I loved her. No one is perfect, I told myself. I was no prize, either; she had to put up with a lot, too. Did I just say that? The question was, could my patience, which was thin at the best of times, cope with so much drama? I convinced myself it could.
Phil Dent took the full force of the frustration and aggression that had been building in me from the first day of the tournament. Fortunately, I managed to channel it into my game. The super-dry, well-worn grass of Kooyong reminded me of the armory floorboards, and I adopted the approach Mom had taught me back in St. Louis, moving forward, taking the ball early, blasting it down the lines and across the court. Even with the crowd cheering their countryman on, he didn’t stand a chance. I took the first two sets, and although he managed to rally in the third set, taking it 6-4 and putting on a show for his fans, it was just a momentary setback. I regrouped, ignored the lynch mob in the stands, and won the fourth, 6-3, to capture my first Grand Slam title.
I was ecstatic, even if, to be brutally honest, the Australian Open in the 1970s didn’t draw the number of top players that it should have. The long flight and the unfortunate timing of the tournament limited t
he field. But it was still a Grand Slam and an important win in anybody’s book.
If the scheduling had been like it is today, I would have gone to Australia more often. But I played the Australian Open only twice in my career, winning it in 1974 and losing to John Newcombe in the finals the following year, and I thought that was good enough. I don’t regret any of the decisions I made, but who knows; if I had played the Australian a few more times, would I have won more majors? Your guess is as good as mine.
Between 1974 and 1979, I also didn’t play in the French Open—we’ll come to that in a minute—so there was a long period of time when I was competing only in Wimbledon and the US Open. So get this—in my career I won eight Slams and was in the finals of seven others, basically playing only two majors a year. Take it for what it’s worth.
Getting that first win in the Australian Open was huge. That victory did set me up perfectly for what was to become the most extraordinary single year of my career: I would win 15 tournaments and lose only four matches out of 103. I also saw it as a launchpad that would catapult me toward the French Open and Wimbledon.
I was partially correct.
8
TWIN PEAKS
Nothing could stop me in 1974. My body finally filled out, the last of my puppy fat disappeared, and I felt stronger than ever. I had the confidence of a first-time Grand Slam winner and I was ready to rip the heart out of anyone who stood in my way.
After a run of seven tournament wins through March—in Roanoke, Little Rock, Birmingham, Salisbury, Hampton (Virginia), Salt Lake City, and Tempe—I was steaming toward the remaining three Slams of the year. Throw in a couple of doubles victories (one with Frew McMillan, one with Vitas Gerulaitis) and it seemed like I couldn’t lose.
As I made my way across the country, from big cities to small towns, I would walk into restaurants with Nasty and it was like a couple of movie stars had entered the room. Television had made us more recognizable, and the popularity of tennis was hitting new heights. One evening, people even started clapping as soon as we came through the doors. Thinking the applause was for Nasty, I waited for him to pass in front of me, but he held back.
“No, Connors boy,” he said fondly, “this is for you.”
Just as American tennis, and tennis in general, was on the rise, along came the French Tennis Federation and its president, Philippe Chatrier, to pull a power play.
But first another history lesson. World Team Tennis, created in 1973 by Jordan Kaiser, Dennis Murphy, Fred Barman, and Larry King (Billie Jean’s husband at the time), took its cue from football, baseball, and basketball. They aligned a sports team with a major city and franchised it, just when tennis was becoming more and more accessible to regular sports fans. The WTT was innovative; it allowed on-court coaching, substitutions, and featured mixed male and female teams. There was crowd participation, guaranteed payments to players, and deep-rooted interstate rivalries. Matches were decided on the basis of total number of games won during one set each of men’s singles, women’s singles, men’s doubles, women’s doubles, and mixed doubles. Were these guys crazy? No way; it was a shot in tennis’s arm. I was all for it and I signed with the Baltimore Banners for the 1974 season. This was going to be both fun and profitable.
The establishment (the ILTF, in essence) was spooked by the WTT organization, because they thought its version of the sport was too extreme. I’ve always suspected that the single element that riled the establishment the most was the salaries over and above prize money, because that was something really out of the ordinary. Why they couldn’t work together, I’ll never know. The ILTF feared the WTT would undermine the privileged position of their major tournaments. The U.S.-based Team Tennis was obviously a threat to the European tour, I guess because of the summer schedule and the French Open in particular—and the WTT had to be dealt a blow.
Chatrier decided that anyone who signed with WTT would be denied access to Roland Garros, the site of the French Open, and the ATP supported that decision. That left Evonne Goolagong and me, both winners of the Australian Open earlier in the year, dripping wet and hung out to dry. Paris at the very end of May is beautiful, and I should’ve been in a good mood despite my less-than-stunning results at Roland Garros over the past two years. The problem was I was in a court, not on one.
Bill Riordan had filed a claim to have my ban from the French Open overturned, and although this was the last place I wanted to be (you know how I feel about lawyers), I knew this was important. Fair enough, I thought. As Bill saw it, the establishment was unlawfully standing in the way of my opportunity to have a crack at the calendar Grand Slam. In doing so, it was depriving me of the chance to collect an incentive payment that I had been offered by a perfume company, if I managed to win all four majors in a single season—a sum equal to my Baltimore Banners salary. The judge wasn’t impressed, and our action was dismissed.
Fuck it. Move on.
That was the end of the dispute, as far as I was concerned. I wasn’t bitter. I was disappointed, especially since Chrissie had been allowed to play in Paris, beating Olga Morozova in the finals to win her first major. But would I make the long trip to Australia a second time to give myself another chance at a Slam? That’s what I was thinking about as I made my way to London and on up to Manchester for a grass-court warm-up tournament—and another victory. Back to business.
So it came as a huge surprise, the night before Wimbledon began, to read in the newspapers that I had decided to raise the stakes. Apparently, I was taking out a lawsuit against Jack Kramer (the ATP CEO), Donald Dell (the ATP legal counsel), and Commercial Union Assurance (the sponsors of the ILTF’s Grand Prix circuit) for restraint of trade. The lawsuit basically said that Kramer and Dell, supported by Commercial Union, had used their influence to have me banned from the French Open.
For good measure, Riordan also threw in claims that their actions amounted to an unfair monopoly over world tennis, and their insistence on controlling TV deals—plus the balls, towels, and programs used at tournaments—was anti-competitive. This all meant, basically, that I couldn’t pursue my chosen career. The combined total of these claims? A mere $30 million.
The headlines said that Jimmy Connors was suing his fellow players—and Arthur Ashe in particular, in his role as president of the ATP—for the sum of $10 million, the amount allocated to the restraint-of-trade part of the lawsuit, and that was the first I heard of it. I had been completely in the dark. It was Bill Riordan, the ultimate shit-stirrer, up to his old tricks. To make matters worse, when Mom heard the news, she was as surprised as I was. It was one of the very few occasions in my career when she wasn’t in control of what was going on.
Riordan didn’t seem at all concerned or embarrassed when I demanded to know what the hell he’d done. I think it’s fair to say that he had a score to settle with the people he felt were trying to squeeze him out of the game with their scheduling carve-up in 1972.
“Jimmy, leave it to me. Those guys, they’re frauds. You stick to tennis, and I’ll beat the rest. And don’t forget, any publicity is good publicity.”
Despite his assurances, I wasn’t convinced that this was a good move or good publicity. Even though I was being used as a pawn, overnight I became the most hated player on the circuit. The ATP had to use its membership fees to defend the case, which brought a load of antagonism my way. Why weigh yourself down with needless baggage? Why provide your opponents with an added incentive to beat you? Why did I let Bill continue with the lawsuit? I honestly don’t know, because all it was to me was a pain in the ass.
The atmosphere was tense, and it became very personal. During Wimbledon, and throughout the rest of the year, whenever I walked into a locker room, every player would turn his back on me. You can guess how well I reacted to that. They don’t care about me, so I don’t give a fuck about them. Just protecting myself. Even so, it wasn’t exactly comfortable sitting there getting ready to play, knowing that out of the 40 guys in the room, 39 were against you. Arthur
Ashe later wrote that whenever he walked past me during Wimbledon in 1974 he wanted to smack me in the mouth. Oh, Arthur, settle down.
In some ways those experiences helped mold my attitude over the rest of my career. I didn’t start the fight, and I couldn’t end the fight. I was simply in the middle of a nasty power struggle and being cast as the villain. Well, screw you. I’ll use the aggravation to motivate myself.
Whenever I was in London, I liked to stay at a hotel called the Inn on the Park, right on Hyde Park Corner, near Downing Street, Buckingham Palace, and the Hard Rock Cafe. I didn’t really care about being close to the All-England Club. After matches, I needed to escape the tennis scene and do my own thing. Plus, at the time, there was only one restaurant in Wimbledon Village, and central London had so much more to offer . . . the Playboy Club, for starters. In 1974, Chrissie was booked into the same hotel, too. (OK, so she was with her mother, but then when wasn’t she?) Mrs. Evert seemed to go everywhere with Chrissie, all summer long, right across Europe, and I guess rightfully so—Chrissie was a teenager, after all. But whenever I turned around, Mrs. Evert was there, watching. It was almost like she didn’t trust me.
Crazy, I know. America’s Sweetheart and the most hated guy in tennis. What could possibly go wrong there?
My mom traveled with me, too, but she wasn’t interested in my nighttime activities. I wasn’t her daughter. She understood that boys would be boys. Provided nothing got in the way of my tennis, she didn’t really mind.
“When you work, you work, Jimmy. When you play, you play. And you should put just as much effort into that as you do your tennis.”
I didn’t disappoint her on the court, so I couldn’t disappoint her off of it.
The situation with Chrissie and her mom was different. I got that. It just meant we had to be a little smarter in order to spend some time alone together.
Some months earlier, I had played against a young South African guy named David Schneider. It was a tight match, and halfway through he started rolling his shoulders to help him relax.
The Outsider: A Memoir Page 11