The Outsider: A Memoir

by Jimmy Connors

  Spencer came with me to the Davis Cup, and we decided afterward to grab a few days of sun and relaxation in Acapulco. But once we started hanging out at Carlos and Charlie’s, a bar and restaurant that was the center of nightlife for the rich and beautiful, we quickly gave up on the idea of getting any rest. Our routine consisted of waking up bleary-eyed and heading out to the beach, where we continued to do nothing but damage to ourselves.

  One day, on the way out of our hotel, I pass a mirror. I know I’ve been out of control, but I really don’t like what I see. My gut is hanging over my shorts, my face is puffy, my eyes are bloodshot slits—oh, and by the way, I’m 185 fat-ass pounds. Oh, my God. Number one in the world? Who am I kidding? I’ve broken all the rules I’ve stood by over the course of my career. There’s only one thing to do. Get back to the basics.

  I picked up the phone and dialed the only person I knew I would listen to. Mom.

  11

  THE POINT’S NOT OVER ’TIL IT’S OVER

  I had come to the end of a hellish year, a year of too many off-court distractions, which had a detrimental effect on my game. When I placed that call to Mom from Acapulco, I knew I had to get my priorities straight so that I could once again focus on tennis.

  The first thing I did was move from my house in the Hollywood Hills. Despite my initial excitement about the place—it was a pretty cool pad—it had never really felt like home. I needed to find a quieter spot, one that required a lot less upkeep, where I didn’t have to worry about the gardener, the pool guy, and the trash man.

  I found it nearby. Except for the bedrooms, it was a huge open space that even had room in my bar area for a pool table and pinball machine. My favorite spot was next to the fireplace, where I could sit in my leather chair and look out over the lights of LA. A bottle of Suave Bola and I’m set.

  Mom came out to stay for a month; I enjoyed some good home cooking and she helped me work on my game and get back in shape for the start of the 1976 season. By the time I hit the courts in Birmingham, Alabama, at the end of January, I’d lost almost 20 pounds. I beat Billy Martin in straight sets in the singles final, and Erik Van Dillen and I took the doubles title. I was back on track.

  I also had a new girlfriend, who just happened to live in the same apartment building as Chrissie, right down the street from my place. That was . . . interesting. I still wanted to keep my private life private, so there was a lot of sneaking around. I really didn’t want to bump into Chrissie; it would have been awkward for both of us.

  I’d met my new girlfriend back in November at a birthday party at one of my favorite restaurants in LA, Mr. Chow’s. Dino Martin had persuaded me to go by telling me that there might be someone there I’d be interested in.

  He wasn’t wrong.

  Spencer, Dino, Desi, and I had a big table with plenty of beautiful women sitting around, but there was only one who caught my eye. Fortunately, there was an empty seat next to her.

  “Good luck, son,” Spencer said, grinning at me.

  Her name was Marjie Wallace, and she had been Miss World 1973 before she lost her crown due to some ridiculous rule about not dating celebrities. Hmmm . . . Marjie moved with a fast crowd and had dated the soccer star George Best, the Grand Prix driver Peter Revson, and even the singer Tom Jones. She was easy to talk to and fun to be around. And, by the way, did I mention she was hot?

  After that night at Mr. Chow’s we started spending a lot of time together, traveling to tournaments, going out for dinner, or just hanging around my apartment. Pretty soon she was a semi-permanent fixture at my place (and we even got a dog, Sneakers, a schnauzer), but she never officially moved in. That wasn’t her style, and it wasn’t mine.

  Marjie had just been through a tough couple of years. Revson had died in a racing accident in March 1974, only weeks after she’d been stripped of her Miss World title. A few months later, she had been taken to the hospital after an accidental overdose of sleeping pills. I didn’t know any of this when I first met her, and by the time we started going out, she seemed to have recovered, and drugs were never a part of our life when we were together.

  I was preparing for my third Challenge Match in Las Vegas, this time against Manuel Orantes, whom I’d lost to at the 1975 Open. I had defeated Borg at the US Pro Indoors in Philadelphia at the end of January, but I still thought there was something missing in my game. Even though I was in much better shape than I’d been for a long time, that killer instinct of 1974 hadn’t fully returned, and I couldn’t shake the dull, tired feeling that had nagged me over the previous 12 months. I gave an interview at the time in which I described myself as having been a “pussy” on the court. That just about summed up how I felt about my game, and I promised myself that I would fix that at Caesars Palace.

  Even though Bill and I had parted company, he was still promoting the Challenge Match. And, in the way that only Bill could, he started to stir the pot again, claiming that because I had been struggling with my fitness throughout most of 1975, I had deliberately dodged opponents. I knew that this was just Bill being Bill, but it struck a nerve.

  He was right about the condition I’d been in, and I wanted to show him that even without his help I could look after myself. At the weigh-in (yeah, the weigh-in, another one of Bill’s inventions), I registered a healthy 170 pounds, compared with the 185 pounds I’d been carrying around New York in September. But I still wasn’t satisfied with my fitness, and I had a few more pounds to lose to get to where I wanted to be.

  Orantes’s straight-sets victory over me in the US Open meant that once again the Challenge Match would draw a whole lot of attention. CBS was airing it as another World Heavyweight Championship of Tennis, and Caesars Palace rolled out the red carpet across the casino floor so that we could walk to the court through a crowd of fans.

  Unfortunately, the match didn’t live up to the billing. Unlike at Forest Hills, this time I decided to follow Pancho’s advice, rushing net to cut off my opponent’s backhand slice and being more aggressive on his second serve, even though Mom was unsure about the tactic.

  “OK, Pancho, I’ll attack whenever I can.”

  “Good, Jimmy, good. And if that doesn’t work, drop it. It’s fine. Do what you need to do to win.”

  Pancho understood both my game and my personality better than anyone. And, yes, he was back in my corner and effectively my full-time coach again. The strain between Mom and Pancho had eased, if not healed. Pancho had made it clear to me that if I ever wanted his help or advice, all I had to do was ask. Which I did before playing Borg at the previous Open and again at my tournament win in Alabama at the beginning of the year. After the Orantes Challenge Match, Pancho would be beside me almost without exception for the rest of the year.

  Orantes was not at the top of his game, and it was one of those days when everything went right for me. I think nerves played a big part in his performance, and I was able to take advantage of that from early on. The match was over in little more than an hour, and happily for Caesars Palace, the fans were able to take out their frustrations in the casino. If I’d been smarter when it became obvious after the first set that Manuel was struggling on the faster indoor court, as opposed to the slower clay of Forest Hills, I’d have taken my time and won anyway in the end. Then maybe Caesars would have signed us up for another Challenge Match. But Orantes was too good a player for me to give him any opening to get back into the match. Winning was the only thing that mattered, and I had to do it any way I could.

  I was still pissed at the French tennis authorities for banning me in 1974, and once again I ignored Roland Garros in 1976, making Wimbledon my first Grand Slam of the year. I arrived in England after six tournament victories, as well as playing my part in the USA’s 6-1 World Cup victory over Australia in March. My confidence was high.

  I had a fairly easy passage to the quarterfinals, feeling that I was getting better after every match, until I ran into Roscoe Tanner. The weather had turned very hot, the grass on Centre Court at the All
-England Club was bone-dry, and because of the heat, the ball traveled through the air like a bullet. Tanner’s big serve proved to be a devastating weapon. Although I did everything I could to meet the challenge, he was too good on the day and sent me on a quick trip back home.

  I hated losing any match, but I usually found it pretty easy to put losses behind me and move on. Having to leave early this time was not OK with me, though. Mom had set up some endorsements and advertising deals that included big bonuses if I won Wimbledon. As I said to a reporter at the time when he asked how much the defeat hurt, “I’m down two million bucks, buddy.”

  I could’ve been exaggerating, but not by much.

  After winning three tournaments (in Washington, North Conway, and Indianapolis), I went into the West Side Tennis Club for the US Open in my best shape in almost two years. With Pancho riding shotgun, I felt confident that I could climb out of my Grand Slam slump.

  That was the thing about Pancho—I knew that when I looked up into the stands, I would see someone who wanted the victory as much as I did, and I was determined to please him.

  I played some of my best tennis ever at that Open. By the quarterfinals I hadn’t dropped a set, but I knew that if I was going to win the championship, I would have to raise my level of performance even further. To get to the finals I had to beat top clay-court specialists, Jan Kodes and Guillermo Vilas, back-to-back, and those two victories were exactly what I needed for my confidence. Laying in wait in the finals was the French Open champion and the best player in the world on clay, Björn Borg.

  Now, for all the advice Pancho had given me throughout my career, he always kept in mind what Mom had said to him when she first brought me to Beverly Hills: “Do what you want with him, Pancho; make him better, but don’t change his game.” And that’s exactly how we approached everything, working on new dimensions to supplement my natural game, not to replace it. In the 1975 semis, Pancho had advised me to slug it out from the baseline, but the night before this final, we decided to mix things up. We both knew that my game had developed over the past year and I was eager to see how the other strategies I had incorporated into it would work. No better time than the finals of a Grand Slam to try something new, right?

  “Play to your strengths, Jimmy. Forget about him. Think only of what you are doing best. You are moving well and you’re hitting the ball flatter than ever. Tomorrow, use that. Attack him; that’s where your winning game is. Finish the points early.”

  With his speed, Borg could chase down every ball and make impossible shots. My new approach was to hit sharper angles, moving the Swede forward so that he couldn’t stay in his baseline comfort zone. When I had the chance, I would hit deep to the corners and come to the net; that would shorten the points and disrupt his rhythm. But against Borg especially, I remembered Two-Mom and Mom’s rule of thumb: “Always expect the ball to come back, Jimmy.”

  Never, ever think the point is over until it actually is. If I hit a perfect shot, way out wide, I always stayed ready for it to come back. The question was whether my game was at a level where I could match him, groundstroke for groundstroke, like I had the previous year.

  New York fans have never been a quiet, unemotional bunch. That’s what made the US Open so great; it was volatile, exciting, and aggressively loud for every match. And in 1976 the volume was turned up to a new level of craziness, thanks to my buddy Nasty.

  I always tried to watch Nasty’s matches whenever I could. His ability to make shots that were beyond everyone else was amazing. And then there was his attitude, which, in the second round, against the German Hans-Jürgen Pohmann, reached new heights—or should I say new lows? Yes, it was brutal—but what a show. The match turned into one of the most controversial of all time, and the fans and players poured in to see it as word spread around Forest Hills.

  There was tension on the court from the very first point. I don’t know why exactly, but Nasty told me later that he didn’t like Pohmann’s face, which would’ve been enough for Nasty. And the crowd could sense trouble brewing, which only added to the enjoyment. Nasty had been questioning calls during the first set, but when a fan called one of Nasty’s shots out in the first-set tiebreaker, Nasty went berserk. He forced the point to be replayed, and after that he never calmed down.

  As he challenged more calls in the second set, the crowd started booing him and throwing coins and drinks onto the court. Nasty responded by screaming even louder, spitting, and flipping them off. I thought, Nasty was going to spontaneously combust. One minute the fans hurled abuse at him, and then the next cheered him when he made another incredible shot. Believe me, Nasty ate it up.

  Toward the end of the match, after Pohmann fell to the ground for the third time with cramps, the gloves came off. Nasty was sick of Pohmann’s theatrics, and the two of them traded almost as many insults as shots. Nasty won the match but refused to shake either the umpire’s or his opponent’s hand. Instead, as they headed off the court, Nasty launched his parting shot at Pohmann, calling him a Nazi. All the players raced to the locker room to see what was going to happen next, and we weren’t disappointed. Pohmann went after Nasty. Fortunately, one of the players intervened. I’ve gotta think that Pohmann would have had the best of it, but I’m glad it didn’t come to that. It would have been a black eye for tennis—and probably one for Nasty as well. Oh, man, the pressures of the US Open. God, was tennis fun back then.

  After all of that, the fans needed something even more momentous to finish off those 12 days of mayhem—and they got it in the final. Some of the shots that Borg and I played that day—he with his little wooden racquet and me with my T2000—were just flat-out crazy. The crowd responded with the kind of passion that showed their appreciation for fierce competitors and great tennis.

  The first set went according to plan. I came into net when I could, following up my punishing groundstrokes by taking the ball out of the air whenever possible, not letting Borg settle into a rhythm. In the second set, I was hitting the ball so flat to the corners that I missed a few shots, both out wide and into the net, giving Borg a way back into the match, but I refused to let it put me off my game. I was playing to win, continuing to go for my shots.

  Sitting back and letting Borg dictate the play—playing it safe like a lot of guys and hoping for the best—wasn’t an option for me. Those missed shots just made me press even harder. Keep playing your game, Jimmy. That’s what you do best. If you lose, OK, you lose, but it happens on your terms.

  Going into the third set, I stuck to my game. I kept hitting flat, deep balls to the baseline, not letting Borg build on the momentum of winning the second set. It worked. The match had sapped our energy, and winning the tiebreaker in the third set proved to be the turning point. Fighting to the end is what tennis is all about for me, and with Borg you could take nothing for granted. But I got on top early in the fourth, won the title on my third match point, and added another Grand Slam to my collection.

  In December 1975, I was supposedly finished—just a chubby, washed-up, fading superstar with no manager, no coach, and no fiancée.

  By September 1976, I had my fourth Grand Slam, Mom looking after my business, Pancho in the stands, and Miss World to wake up to.

  Washed-up ain’t so bad.

  “Jimmy, I’ve got to go home. Today. There’s a flight this afternoon. I’m going to pack and call a cab to take me to the airport. I know it’s short notice, sorry, but something has come up in LA.”

  It was November, and Marjie and I were having breakfast in our hotel suite in London. I was supposed to play the Wembley final that evening.

  “What do you mean?” I asked her. “What’s up? Is everything OK?”

  “It’s just work, Jimmy, nothing to worry about. You’ll be OK here without me. Lornie will keep you company. Everything’s fine.”

  She was right about one thing: My buddy from Illinois, Lornie Kuhle, was with me on tour. Mom wasn’t traveling with me anymore, but she could still figure out if I was strug
gling by just watching my matches on television, then she’d call me to offer a solution. That’s why I call her a genius, but maybe it was just because she really cared. She had an amazing ability to assess and analyze the smallest details of my game that needed work.

  For his part, Lornie was a great organizer of my daily schedule, and he was able to take the pressure off me. We played a lot of backgammon, and there was always a chance that guys would be looking for a money game. We were happy to oblige.

  One time, Lornie and I were at a tournament in Frankfurt and ran into some buddies who just happened to have a backgammon board. We stayed up four nights straight playing in their hotel room, Lornie and me against the two of them. The only time I left the room was to go play my matches. I’m making $250,000 for the event and I’m more excited about having a chance to win a couple thousand bucks on the backgammon board. It’s crucial to have your priorities straight.

  The other good thing about having Lornie along was that he understood tennis. As he says himself, he was a frustrated player who never made it, but he was close to Bobby Riggs and had picked up a lot of tips from him, which he was more than happy to pass on when we practiced. I didn’t always listen, of course, but if Mom had talked to Lornie and given him a piece of advice on a part of my game, he would pass on exactly what she’d said. He became her mouthpiece.

  “Tell Jimmy’s he’s tossing the ball too far out front on the second serve.”

  “He’s not getting down low enough on the short balls. He’s got to bend his knees more. Take the ball even earlier.”

  Lornie was good for my confidence, and he could also tell me when I was out of control. We had known each other for so long that I didn’t mind, and he was usually right, anyway.

  I couldn’t get a straight answer out of Marjie all morning about why she had to leave. She kept saying that something had come up, it was important for her career, and she had to be back in LA to deal with it.