The Outsider: A Memoir (12 page)

It’s July in Philadelphia and Team Tennis has been living up to its billing. The place is wild, with fans screaming and cheering, throwing plastic beer cups, rooting for the home team, and I’m loving it. Then, just as I am about to serve in a close match with a lot riding on the outcome, the noise level suddenly drops long enough for me to clearly hear a guy shout,

“Hey, Connors! Why don’t you just give it up and go back home to Chrissie?”

I let the ball drop and turn around.

“Who said that?”

There’s a commotion in the third row, and people are pointing at a guy sitting there with a smug look on his face. I walk over and put my foot up on the advertising board. I know I can’t reach the guy with my fist, but I can take a swipe at him with my racquet. I lean forward.

“Stand up, you motherfucker.”

The security guards rush over and grab my arm as the guy starts to get to his feet. When he does, he just keeps going and going and going, getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

Shit.

The security guards are forcibly pulling me away and I’m not resisting, happy to go. “Fuck you. Fuck you,” I shout at the guy as we’re backing up. I’m so brave. But I’m no hero, and I didn’t want to have to ruin my T2000.

Fast-forward to January 1975 and I’m back in Philly at the US Pro Indoors. After my match, there’s a knock on the locker-room door. Bill Norris, the trainer and a good friend, answers the door.

“Jimmy, there’s a guy here who wants to see you.”

Probably looking for an autograph, I think. I go to the door. Shit. I know him right away. It’s not easy to forget someone that size.

“You remember me?” the guy asks.

“Hey, sure. How’s it going?” I say sheepishly, my voice rising two octaves.

“I’m in the bar with my girlfriend. I enjoyed the match tonight. Come and have a drink with us,” the guy tells me.

Like I’m going to say no?

“Yeah, love to. I’ll be there in two minutes.”

In the bar he has a question: “Last year, were you really going to hit me with your racquet?”

“Well, I was certainly thinking about it, but it wouldn’t have hurt you anyway.”

I’m nothing if not sensible.

In August, I beat Björn Borg on clay in the Indianapolis finals, and I’m often asked whether I see that match as being the equivalent of the French Open earlier in the year, which Borg had won and I was barred from.

“You beat Borg on clay in 1974, Jimmy. His surface. Doesn’t that basically give you a calendar Grand Slam?”

I don’t think so, not at all. I only claim what I actually achieved. Although in the US the Indianapolis clay probably came closest to resembling Roland Garros, it wasn’t the same: It was faster, and the balls were also different, lighter. The French Open in the 1970s was like playing in mud, and they used Tretorn balls, which slowed the game down even more.

Would I have liked to have that shot at beating Borg in the French Open? Hell, yeah. But would I then have gone on to win Wimbledon? Who knows? It was the politics of the different associations and the ignorance of the people involved that pissed me off the most, nothing more. They were trying to stop me from making a living just so they could vie for power and stake their claims to the money machine that guys like me were creating for them.

No wonder I had a bad attitude.

Honestly, in some ways I actually liked the fact that 1974 ended up like it did, with an asterisk by my name in the record books. After 40 years, people are still wondering if I would have won the Grand Slam. I was always told to keep a little mystery about myself, but that’s the kind of mystery I could have done without.

“Hey, Connors, get us in. Come on, man, we want to see the tennis.”

I’m walking through the doors of the West Side Tennis Club, in Forest Hills, to begin my quest to capture my third Slam of the year when I hear the shouts. I look over my shoulder to see two big guys waving at me from the sidewalk. I’ve never seen either of them before, but I like their nerve. And what was I going to say, anyway: “Gee, no, I can’t. They have rules”?

What did I care about the rules?

“Yeah, OK. Let’s go.”

My two new friends waited for me while I got changed, then walked with me to my match. It quickly got around that these two guys were my bodyguards. Why argue with the myth?

For the next 18 years, whenever I was in New York, Doug Henderson, who became my friend, followed me wherever I went. Doug even had T-shirts made up with
THE JAMES GANG
printed on them. And that’s what it was all about, as far as I was concerned: entertaining people and being a little bit different.

At the US Open, just like at Wimbledon, the crowds were against me, but at least they were there. I had tricky matches all through the tournament—Jeff Borowiak in the first round, four sets; John Alexander in the third round, four sets; Kodes in the fourth round, four sets; and Alex Metreveli in the quarters, four sets—but I never felt threatened. In the final, for the second time, I was going up against the people’s favorite, Ken Rosewall, and once again, I reached perfection, only quicker. To reach such a peak once in your life is lucky, but to experience the sensation twice within two months is truly amazing, and it never happened again in the rest of my career. It took me just under 70 minutes to win, 6-1, 6-0, 6-1, and complete the Connors Slam.

And, boy, did that piss everybody off.

Unfortunately, Chrissie lost in the semis in Forest Hills to Evonne Goolagong. Instead of celebrating and having her knocking on my bedroom door the night before my final, like at Wimbledon, I was put in the position of trying to console her. Her reaction was totally understandable, but it made partying pretty hard work. There it was again. You can’t have two number ones in a relationship. It’s just not going to work.

Because of our schedules, Chrissie and I had been away from each other for long stretches over that summer. Neither of us liked it, but we had jobs to do. I spent more time with Nasty than I did with Chrissie, and even if we talked on the phone a lot, it was clear things weren’t all that good between us. Or at least things weren’t all that I wanted them to be.

Our wedding date was November 8, just a few weeks away, but I felt left out of the big life-changing decisions that were being made by Chrissie. Our telephone conversations had become one-sided. This is what’s happening. This is the way it’s going to be. I started to wonder: If things were like this now, what was life going to be like when we were married?

Listen, an issue had arisen as a result of youthful passion and a decision had to be made as a couple.

I was staying in an apartment and Nasty was there when Chrissie called to say she was coming out to LA to take care of that “issue.” I was perfectly happy to let nature take its course and accept responsibility for what was to come. Chrissie, however, had already made up her mind that the timing was bad and too much was riding on her future. She asked me to handle the details.

“Well, thanks for letting me know. Since I don’t have any say in the matter, then I guess I’m just here to help.”

I put the phone down and Nasty looked at me.

“Jimbo, you’re not staying in tonight, are you?”

“Well, I guess not.”

That all happened during one of only two pro tournaments I didn’t win in 1974. After my conversation with Chrissie, and a night out with Nasty, I was tired.

In mid-September, I won my second Pacific Southwest tournament, beating Harold Solomon in the finals, and then went to my next event in San Francisco, where my buddy Bobby Kreiss was also playing, so I knew there was some fun in store. After I lost my quarterfinal, Bob and I had dinner and ended up in the sky-lounge bar, in the Mark Hopkins Hotel.

Looking out over the city, the question I didn’t want to ask and didn’t want to answer once again bubbled to the surface. Why was I getting married now? My true feelings on the subject had been building for a while, and I knew what I had to do.

I went back to my room and called Chrissie. It was a horrible feeling, but I knew it was over. Getting married wasn’t going to be good for either of us.

“I’ve been thinking. We’re pretty young; maybe we should take a step back and think about giving this a little more time,” I said.

She was on the East Coast and it was late, but she did not hesitate.

“OK, if that’s what you think. I’ve got a match tomorrow. Not a problem.”

“Right. Bye.”

That was it.

Chrissie remembers it as a six-hour discussion, but I can only assume she’s thinking about all the other conversations that led up to it. The fact is, we had reached a major decision in a matter of seconds, with the understanding that it was probably better for the both of us.

I was sad. I loved her and we had both put a lot of effort into our relationship, but it kept going back to the same old question: Can two number ones exist in the same family? It wouldn’t have worked for us and it was better that we figured it out early on.

In public, we announced that we had just postponed our wedding, but I knew that it was over. Going backward was not for me. It’s easy to see now that our relationship was never going to work out. One of us was going to have to give in; I knew it wouldn’t be me, and I doubt it would have been her.

9

BATTLE OF THE BALLS

I
t’s mid-December 1974 and I’ve just moved into my new house up in the Hollywood Hills, above Sunset Boulevard. My buddies Dino Martin and Desi Arnaz Jr. have their own places right next door, and they’re coming around for a drink before I pack my bags and head to the airport to catch a plane to Australia to defend my Open title.

I go out onto my balcony and look at the view across to the mountains. To my right, the sun reflects off the water of my swimming pool. How good can it get? I have space to grow here, to put down some roots. It’s the kind of place that suits me. My new pad is what the greatest year of my life has bought for me. This house is everything I’ve ever wanted . . . isn’t it?

I’ve even got a new girlfriend. Well, kind of. We met at a party on Thanksgiving, a few weeks after Chrissie and I called off our engagement. We’ve had some fun times but I’m not looking for anything serious, and neither is she. That’s what makes it so nice. No pressure.

I’ll be spending Christmas at the Australian Open again, in order to defend my title, hopefully ringing in the New Year in the finals. Yeah, I’m looking forward to it.

New Year’s Day 1975 and I’m back in the finals at the Kooyong Stadium. It’s me, the number one seed, versus the local hero, former world number one, Wimbledon and US Open champion John Newcombe, and we’re set to fight it out in the Melbourne heat. The tournament has been pretty straightforward so far—I’ve dropped just one set—but none of that matters now. Here we are with 16,000 Newcombe fans and about a million goddamn flies buzzing around my head and crawling all over my back. I swear, when one of those suckers lands on me it leaves a bruise. They even give us fly repellant, which seems to attract even more of them. As if worrying about Newcombe isn’t enough.

It’s a set apiece and I’m down 2-3 on serve. Newcombe hits a crosscourt forehand return, just inside the line. Love-15. I have to get my next first serve in, wide to his backhand . . . Shit, it’s out—but wait, it’s called good. I’ll take it, thank you very much. The crowd doesn’t like it, but then again, he’s their guy.

OK, a solid serve, a short return, get down low like Pancho says, half volley deep, and Newcombe hits it long. He gives me a shocked look. That was out by a mile, matey. 30-15. Now I have to mix it up, serve down the line this time, straight and strong, and here we go, Newk’s not happy again and his fans are screaming, “Fault! Fault!”

It’s getting pretty hot out here and it’s not just the sun.

Screw it. You can have it, Newk, I don’t need it. I’m going to serve a double fault to even things up. There, back to 40-30.

Now let’s play tennis.

I’ve been asked over the years whether I dumped that final, whether, when I gave Newcombe that point by deliberately double-faulting, it was so I could line up a big-money revenge Challenge Match in Vegas.

Are you kidding? I have never tanked a match in my life. Take a look at the fourth set in Melbourne, for Christ’s sake. I fought like crazy to save match point at 3-5, and in the tiebreaker I came back from being down to earn set points of my own. I was unable to convert them and Newcombe took it in four sets. Well, that’s what they put the net up for, to go out and play and see who wins. He was better than I was that day and it’s as simple as that. No worries, as they say Down Under, but it certainly made me think twice about ever giving a point away again.

“Jimmy Connors probably thinks he’s the next-best thing to 7 Up.”

I got really annoyed at those words from the great Australian tennis player Rod Laver, who won two Grand Slams and owns the record for the most singles titles (200) in the history of tennis. He was ranked number one in the world for seven consecutive years. And here he’s slagging me off. Normally I’d just shrug and move on, but coming from Laver—not only an exceptional player but one of the true gentlemen in the game—I’ve got to be honest: It got under my skin.

Hell, I’m thinking, maybe I am the next-best thing to 7 Up. I mean, I just demolished Ken Rosewall in the US Open and have beaten virtually everyone I’ve met this year. What’s left?

Bill Riordan is waiting for me in the locker room at Forest Hills. I’m not even tired; I’ve barely broken a sweat out there against Rosewall, and my mind is racing. I hand Bill my racquet and he shakes my hand.

“Hey, champ, you did good today. What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Get me Laver,” I say.

That’s how it happened. It wasn’t rehearsed. I wasn’t told to say it by Bill. It was a throwaway line, but, boy, did it start a firestorm.

Bill’s promotional blood started pumping, and he contacted Laver’s people. They talked about how long Laver would need to get into shape—six months, Rod said. Bill then spoke to the guys he knew in Vegas—he wasn’t exactly a stranger there—and told them, “I’ll get the money, I’ll bring the talent, you build the court,” and they went for it.

Winner takes all. $100,000. In the desert.

I returned from Australia in January 1975 via the Bahamas, where I won on the outdoor courts, then through Birmingham, Alabama, to pick up my 34th career tournament victory, and headed to La Costa and Pancho. He knew Laver’s game inside-out, and together we devised our strategy.

“Play to his forehand, deep,” Pancho said, “because the return will be short. And move forward every chance you get. He hits with so much topspin that you have to jump all over it.”

What he was telling me was to hit hard and deep to the middle and cut off his angles. Got it.

My next stop was Vegas, where Riordan had engineered the first of his fake controversies to crank up the hype for the Challenge Match. Instead of checking in at Caesars Palace, Mom, Pancho, Bill, and I went to the nearby Tropicana Hotel, where Ash Resnick welcomed us with open arms. (You know Ash, right? He was the guy credited with bringing all the high rollers to Vegas by organizing the first big-money junkets. Rumor had it that he also knew people in organized crime. Allegedly. We were good friends, but I had to be careful, because I heard that the worst job in town was starting his car . . .) Bill told the press that our preparations had been compromised by the “unacceptable” rooms that we’d been offered at Caesars Palace. Nonsense. We had been given more than enough space by Caesars; Bill just wanted to give the papers something to write about.

He then hit the Laver camp with another broadside, turning the heat up even more. Laver had been practicing with the heavier Wilson balls, so Bill made another commotion and said we wanted Dunlop balls for the match. We lost that battle. Laver’s people then said they wanted the cans of balls opened two days before the match “to let them breathe,” which was code for “to slow them down.” That’s bullshit, we responded; no one in the history of the game has ever done that. We flipped a coin and the cans were opened. Lost another one. I told you I was a crap gambler, even if it is in my blood.

When the details of the match had been finalized, in November, both camps had settled on Bob Howe as the referee and Gus Lanna as the umpire. Bob, an Australian, had won four mixed-doubles Grand Slam titles, including Wimbledon in 1958, and Gus was a highly experienced umpire and an old friend of mine. Then Caesars Palace officials decided to appoint their tennis director, none other than Pancho Gonzales, as referee. Riordan jumped on it and threatened to call the whole thing off unless Gonzales stepped down.

I couldn’t give a damn about any of that, but Bill loved to stir the pot, and so I let him do it while I concentrated on my tennis. That’s what I was good at. It was all resolved, of course, with Pancho as referee and Bob as assistant referee.

Not that I was beyond a little fire stoking myself when the opportunity presented itself. The day before the first practice session, which was open to the public as well as the press, I handed Bill a slip of paper.

He smiled when he read it.

“Sure, Jimmy. Consider it done.”

When I walked on court the next day, the fans who had gathered early, including a pack of workmen desperately trying to finish building the seats in time, did a double take. There across the back of my warm-up jacket, printed in giant letters, were the words for all the world to see:
BETTER THAN 7 UP
.

Winner-takes-all was Bill’s genius marketing spin. All you have to do is look at the viewing figures. CBS broadcast the Laver Challenge Match, putting up $60,000 for the privilege, pitching it directly against ABC’s well-established
Wide World of Sports
in the schedule. They spanked them in the ratings, with more than a 33 share to
Wide World
’s 28.

Those are football or baseball numbers. But tennis? Unheard of. Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King had laid the groundwork in September 1973, with their Battle of the Sexes, but Riordan raised the bar. It was the money, of course, that drew the big ratings; people who didn’t know a drop shot from a tee shot were tuning in because they were curious to watch two champions from different eras slug it out for a gigantic pot of cash. The winner’s prize money, $100,000, was beyond anything that tennis had seen, more than what I walked away with by winning the 1974 US Open.

We were setting a new standard, making the sports world sit up and take notice. Suddenly tennis was big business, and Bill was in the catbird seat, pulling in TV money, sponsor fees, and a bundle from Caesars Palace to make up the purse. I say “purse” because that’s what prizefighters called it. Bill had created the World Heavyweight Championship of Tennis, and Caesars was only too happy to construct a 4,000-seat stadium that resembled a tennis court disguised as a boxing ring. I’d never seen anything like it before. The fans were right up against the court, close enough for us to sweat on them. It was an intense, combative atmosphere. And the noise! Man, it made the air thick. Bill even introduced our courtside cornermen: Roy Emerson for Laver and Pancho Segura for me.

Laver delays his entrance, a touch of showmanship on his part, which gives me a few minutes to take in the scene. What the hell? The fans are booing me. Really? I’m in Las Vegas. I’m from the USA! Rod’s Australian, and I know he has a lot of fans, but come on! All it does is get me more pumped up.

The place is in an uproar for Laver. It’s Christians-and-lions time. OK, so he’s a tennis legend, and, yeah, he’s come out of retirement to play, but even so, this is just bizarre. I’m sensitive. Don’t you know that by now? You back me into a corner and I’m going to come out swinging . . .

I’m jumping up and down trying to get my Tiger Juices flowing. Let’s get it on. Where is Laver? I scan the ringside seats and see Clint Eastwood, Charlton Heston, Johnny Carson—all American icons, and it looks like they’re cheering for Laver. It’s too much.

“Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” I yell.

Now I’m dancing around the court and flipping the bird at everyone. They’re all just faces in a hostile crowd, even the stars of stage and screen at courtside.

Afterward I heard that Carson took my antics personally. Years later, I went on his
Tonight Show
, and he was still nervous, tiptoeing around anything remotely controversial. Johnny, wherever you are, my friend, I wasn’t offended by your support for Laver. I know you loved tennis, and your presence at the match just gave it more credibility. You know my motto: You can be for me or against me, I don’t care, just as long as you are there.

It’s the sounds of the match that have stayed with me over the years. Every shot echoed around that tight stadium like a bullet ricocheting off the walls. The crowd quickly got sucked into the action, and we fed off their energy and emotion.

It was an historic occasion. People were witnessing the changing of the guard in tennis. Laver: the elder statesman, low-key, experienced, a finesse player able to fight off the onslaught of groundstrokes that this young, cocky kid threw at him. I raised my game; he matched me. He raised his, and I shut him down. We played some sick tennis out there. The first two sets went my way, but in the third, when Rod should have been tiring, he began to punch killer volley after killer volley into the corners and drilled passing shots down the line, leaving me to shake my head in awe.

We’re in the fourth set and Rod has somehow managed to save five match points. The great old comedienne Totie Fields is in the front row, where she’s been heckling me throughout the match. Now she’s leaping out of her seat and yelling for Laver every time he staves off defeat. As I waste another opportunity to put him away, Totie lets out an ear-piercing shriek of delight. I whirl around and give her the finger.

“Shut. Up.”

Yeah, I know, not very classy, but Totie was a tough cookie, and she could take it as well as she could dish it out.

Holding serve drained Rod. He had battled hard to stay in the match, but the heat and the intensity finally got to him, and I took the final two games easily to win the set 7-5. It was a victory that not only served to confirm my top-dog status in the sport but also put a whopping 100 grand in my pocket. I don’t think Rod was complaining, either; he walked away with a check for $60,000. Not bad for the loser of a winner-takes-all match.

The problem with a misspent youth is that you misspend it. In Beverly Hills, I find I have a taste for the good life, but I keep it under control, refusing to let it interfere with my tennis. I stick by that into my early twenties, rigidly disciplined when I have to be, but now I feel invincible. OK, Newcombe has proved that isn’t strictly true, but that was on the other side of the world. Here in my backyard, I rule, and nothing and no one can touch me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some partying to catch up on.

That’s how I felt through most of 1975. After all the success of the previous year, people warned me to be careful of the slump that would follow, but I ignored them. What slump? That isn’t going to happen to me. I’m too smart and too damn good.

At the start of the year, I won in Salisbury and Boca Raton, to increase my total wins to four by mid-February, not including the Laver match. I had nothing to worry about and I deserved to have a good time. I had earned it. My tennis wasn’t suffering, so I thought it could go on forever. The thing is, when you’re number one, the heavyweight tennis champion of the world, you start to believe your own hype. There’s only one direction you can travel, and it’s not up.