The Outsider: A Memoir (14 page)

The battle for the French Open once again played out on the red clay of Roland Garros without the presence of one James Scott Connors. It wasn’t because of another ban this time; I was just pissed at how I’d been treated the year before, so I decided against entering. Instead, I flew to England early to give myself plenty of time to acclimate to the weather and grass courts. I had a title to defend.

There was no Queen’s Club tournament that year (I don’t know why; it disappeared from the schedule for three years, beginning in 1974), which meant I entered the field in Nottingham, where I made it through two hard-fought matches against Bobby Kreiss and Brian Gottfried before losing out to my old college rival Roscoe Tanner in the quarterfinals.

It had been a decent run, and even though I was still a little too interested in the London nightlife for my own good, I was confident going into Wimbledon. The only question—and it was a big one—was could I do it without Pancho? His relationship with Mom had been strained since the Newcombe Challenge Match, for which Pancho had been given a huge amount of credit across the sports pages, and rightfully so. The press had been saying that it was his savvy coaching that had turned my game around after the defeat by Newcombe in Australia. Suddenly, Pancho was being portrayed as my savior, and it made Mom uncomfortable.

There was also a deeper tension between them, on the management side of my career. Requests were still coming in from IMG and other agencies, begging me to sign with them. These were being channeled through Pancho, whose ideas on the subject were now changing, maybe because he felt I was missing out on some lucrative opportunities.

“McCormack wants to meet with Jimmy, Gloria. Maybe now is the time to think about some sponsorship deals?”

“Donald Dell is organizing an exhibition and he wants Jimmy. Hell, Gloria, it’s worth considering.”

Mom thought she was being backed into a corner, and you know what happens when a Connors feels threatened. It ain’t pretty. Mom started to make snap decisions; one day she would agree to sign a deal and the next day she would say we couldn’t trust anyone. Pancho found himself pulled in two different directions. A deal was on, then it was off, and then it was on again. It must’ve been frustrating for both of them.

I could sense the growing tension, but I ignored it. I didn’t want to be forced to take sides. If it looked like the conversation was going to turn ugly, I would excuse myself to go outside and work on my serve. Chickenshit move? Absolutely. That’s why I don’t really know the full details of what went down, other than the fact that Pancho wanted to formalize our association now that there was big money to be made from the Challenge Matches. Pancho felt that he deserved recognition and compensation above the loose arrangements that we had always had, and I couldn’t fault him for that.

Mom, however, had her doubts about the direction Pancho was taking my tennis. He wanted to work more on my short game, but Mom was convinced my serve and overheads were what needed improving. Whether this was just a smoke screen, I can’t say for sure, but when the issue of a formal contract with Pancho came up, Mom told him she thought that it was time for a break and that maybe we could revisit his arrangement again after the summer.

Pancho says he didn’t take Mom’s decision personally, that he was more disappointed than hurt. He compared it to a tennis match with points won and points lost. I hope that’s true. After everything Pancho and I had been through, it must have been hard for him not to see it as a slap in the face. I should’ve stood up to Mom on that one, but that was easier said than done. I wish I had made it clear that they were equally responsible for whatever success came my way, that they were both geniuses in their own right.

Instead, I withdrew and let Mom decide how things were going to be, because that’s pretty much how it always went. For a guy who excelled at confrontation on the court, I ran from it elsewhere. Mom was dynamic, she had a fierce will, and, most important, she had my best interests at heart. I had no doubt about her intentions, but it didn’t mean she always made the right decisions.

If Two-Mom had still been around, the situation might have turned out differently. My grandmother was a stabilizing influence on Mom and would have helped her see both sides more clearly. I think it’s fair to say that Mom made mistakes from time to time.

So Pancho and I drifted apart for a while. There was no one dramatic moment where he picked up his racquets and stormed out; he simply stopped traveling with me. I wanted to think that things were going so well in my career that maybe his absence wouldn’t be a big deal. Deep down, though, I knew it mattered.

I was getting tired. I’d been on a relentless schedule for 18 months and I had reached a plateau. I was finding it difficult to raise my game, to maintain the tempo, and the bright lights of fame were becoming increasingly seductive. With Pancho gone, I gave into those temptations a little too much.

10

NO ONE’S CUP OF TEA

T
wo days before the start of Wimbledon in 1975, I picked up a newspaper and turned straight to the sports section. The headline read:
CONNORS SUES ASHE
.

What sonuvabitch has gone and done that? As if I didn’t know. I’m in the middle of a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Jack Kramer, Donald Dell, and the ATP, and here I am launching a new one.

Nice move, Bill.

I discovered that Riordan had filed two lawsuits in Indianapolis, claiming damages of $5 million in total for libelous comments that had apparently been directed at us. The first concerned a letter written by Arthur Ashe, as ATP president, in which he referred to me as “unpatriotic.” The second complaint ran along the same lines, originating in an article written by Bob Briner, the ATP’s secretary. He supposedly called Riordan a “nihilist.” Is that even an insult? Let me get my dictionary.

Once again, I was completely in the dark. It was all about Bill seeking revenge for a $3 million slander suit brought by Kramer against us—for what, I never did find out. How many more legal battles was I going to be sucked into? I was losing track. Something had to give, but not before I dealt with a little tournament at the All-England Club.

Whether my opponent was friend or foe, my attitude going into tennis matches never changed. I was out to beat whoever was across the net from me, no matter what my personal feelings were about them. Now, I liked John Lloyd a lot and we were buddies, but he understood as well as I did that once you walked onto the court, business was business.

Chasing a drop shot early in my first-round match on the damp grass of Centre Court, I slipped and hyperextended my knee. I didn’t think much about it at the time; I carried on playing and won 6-2, 6-3, 6-1. But once the adrenaline rush of my first Wimbledon title defense was over, all that changed. I felt a degree of pain that I had never experienced before.

I thought I would be OK after some rest, but when I woke up the next morning, the pain had intensified; my knee was completely swollen and unable to support my weight. I needed to get it checked out. I got in touch with Bill and he found me the top physiotherapist at Chelsea Football Club, one of England’s leading soccer teams, which had the facilities to treat this kind of injury. After they examined me, it turned out I had a couple of hairline factures in my shin—painful but treatable. Thanks, Lloydy, I’m blaming this on you.

The physiotherapist’s advice was simple: rest. The timing could not have been worse. There were only two tournaments that I would have even considered playing while badly injured: Wimbledon and the US Open. As Pancho always told me, once you walk out there, be prepared to play, or don’t walk out there. Well, I thought I was ready. The physiotherapist wrapped up my leg and off I went to practice. I knew that once I was on the court, I would forget about the medical warnings.

After every match I won in those two weeks, I would immediately go for an intensive treatment of ultrasound, ice, and massage—and I wasn’t above taking a fistful of painkillers, either. I kept the injury as secret as I could, refusing to wear even an Ace bandage; I wasn’t going to give anyone an edge.

I advanced to the final without losing a set, but 24 hours before my showdown with Ashe, the physio warned me once again to take it easy; he was afraid the fractures were getting worse.

So why did I continue to play? Because I’m an idiot. I did decide to take the day off before the final, though.

As we left the physiotherapist’s office, Bill turned to me and said, “Don’t worry, kid, you’re strong enough, you’re young enough, and you’re good enough. You’ll be fine. I’m not worried.”

He dropped me off at the hotel and told me he had a few errands to run.

“Rest, Jimmy. I’ll see you later.”

“Not a problem,” I said.

By match time the next day, I’m ready to go. I start off steadily, but I can’t find my rhythm; I’m sluggish and Ashe is playing perfect tennis. I lose the first two sets easily, 6-1, 6-1, and now I’m getting desperate. Funny how things happen when you’re on the brink; a shot here, a lucky break there, and I win the third set, 7-5. I go up a service break early in the fourth set and I’m starting to feel like I have the momentum, but that doesn’t last long. My shots lack pace; they catch the tape and fall backward. The recovery I think I’ve engineered turns out to be a figment of my imagination. Ashe comes back strong to win the set, the match, and the Wimbledon title.

After his victory, Ashe turned to the crowd and raised his fist in triumph. He was a popular winner—and he was playing for black America, as well as representing all the members of the ATP. He deserved to revel in his moment.

Arthur’s game was flawless that day; he had figured out the way to play me. By reducing the speed and length of his shots, he constantly brought me into the net before passing or lobbing me.

The book on me at the time was that I was a one-dimensional player, a grinder and fighter, someone who never gave up, but that basically all I had were my groundstrokes. Excuse me, but look at any match you want back then and, if you know anything about tennis, you’ll see me mixing it up throughout. If things weren’t going my way, I knew how to adapt, how to try something new. Sometimes they were just small alterations in my play, as I figured out a strategy for countering my opponent. I could end up playing five or six different ways in one match, but whichever style I used, my game was all about precision and aggression. I was always about taking chances, going for it, playing with no fear, and being willing to accept the consequences if it didn’t come off. That’s the way I was taught, and being as stubborn as I was, I wasn’t going to change that basic philosophy for anybody.

Oh, yeah, there’s one thing I forgot to tell you. After Bill had dropped me off at the hotel the previous day, one of his “errands” was to go to Ladbrokes, the local betting shop, and put a bundle on Ashe to beat me in the final. I was the heavy favorite, and I understand Bill made out quite well. Can you believe it? And he didn’t even share his winnings, the cheapskate. No wonder I didn’t trust a soul. What’s that saying? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer? I built my emotional wall another few feet higher.

Ashe didn’t like me. He resented all the money I was making from my Challenge Matches, on the grounds that they would diminish the prestige of the Grand Slams. And he didn’t appreciate my attitude toward the Davis Cup. As for how he felt about Riordan’s multiple lawsuits, well, we never talked about that. Arthur didn’t have the balls to confront me; instead, he left a note in my locker at Wimbledon outlining his position.

Well, that speaks volumes, doesn’t it? All he had to do was come up and talk to me face to face, man to man, but he chose not to. It annoyed me, but not so much as when he walked out on to Centre Court wearing his Davis Cup jacket, with
USA
emblazoned across his chest.

In 1974, probably 90 percent of the fans at Wimbledon had been rooting for Ken Rosewall. In 1975, you guessed it, 90 percent of the fans were rooting for Arthur Ashe. What’s a guy gotta do to win friends around here? It took me a few more years to find out the answer to that question.

I did have a small cheering section. Sitting in the box alongside Mom and Bill was the British actress Susan George. Susan and I had met earlier in the summer, and there was a lot of tabloid speculation that we were dating. We weren’t. We were just good friends. Susan was still with the singer Jack Jones, but he wasn’t in town, and since she enjoyed tennis, I invited her to be my guest.

During the second week of the tournament, the All-England Club authorities called me in, supposedly to explain a negative comment I had made to the press about the state of the grass. As far as I was concerned, that wasn’t the real reason they decided to interrogate me right in the middle of the tournament. I was in no mood to stand there and be lectured. I had better things to think about, like trying to win their goddamn championship and not being 100 percent fit. I’ve never been a whiner and I wasn’t about to start now. So I just emptied both barrels.

“This is bullshit and we all know what’s going on here,” I told them. “Instead of worrying about the tennis, all you care about is what the press is saying about your precious grass. How about paying less attention to what I do off the court and more to what I do on it. Give me a break. And while you’re at it, why don’t you bring that bowler hat back to East St. Louis and see how you get treated?”

I knew I wasn’t their favorite person, but I was who I was, and as far as I was concerned, to put it in terms they can understand, they could sod off, the wankers.

I think part of the reason the All-England Club was annoyed at my attitude was that they had gotten a lot of mileage out of Chrissie and me the year before and didn’t appreciate that a big fuss had been made out of my showing up with Susan George. It’s not always about the tennis, is it?

In the spring of 1975, the US papers had reported seeing Chrissie and me out shopping together in LA, holding hands. In the photos they published I was still wearing a necklace she had given me with the inscription
SUPER
on it. Then there was an interview I’d done in which I said I missed her. That was true: I did miss her. We’d been together for a long time (at least, that was how it felt back then), and you can’t just switch that off. Since we had publicly said we hadn’t broken up and that our wedding was just postponed, I could see how people would be talking.

I still cared about Chrissie, but that didn’t mean we were getting back together. We were always going to bump into each other after we split up, at tournaments or exhibitions, and we had friends in common. When we did see each other over that period, we were happy to spend time together. As for the necklace, why wouldn’t I wear it? I liked it and I’ve still got it today.

All the whispering and gossiping came to a head during Chrissie’s semifinal against Billie Jean King at Wimbledon, when Susan and I walked into the players’ box to watch the conclusion of the final set. At the time Chrissie led 3-0, but she went on to lose the next six games in a row. According to the press, this was apparently my fault, because I was sitting with Susan. To be fair, Chrissie never once blamed the loss on me, saying she didn’t even know I was there.

We knew we had to do something to stop all the rumors. It was starting to be a distraction, which neither of us needed. The day after her loss to Billie Jean, we issued a joint statement confirming that our wedding plans were now permanently off. As I said at the time, “She’s going out with other guys and I’m going out with other girls. But the most important thing for me is that Chrissie and I are still good friends.”

What I said was true. If Chrissie had been upset with me for taking Susan to Wimbledon, do you think a few months later we would have been found sitting very publicly with each other making a date? OK, so it was not exactly a romantic date; this was on a staged TV show, where Chrissie asked me to play mixed doubles with her against Billie Jean and Marty Riessen for a CBS special called
Love Doubles
. I even gave Chrissie a kiss on the cheek when I said yes. Granted, it was pretty cheesy, but it showed that we were still friends and we had moved on.

After my Wimbledon defeat (which I took pretty hard, by the way), I had a week off before I was thrown back into the circuit of summer tournaments leading up to the US Open. I was putting on a pound a day just thinking about it, but in the meantime I had to take time out to cut a hit record.

Didn’t see that coming, did you?

Flash back to the summer of 1974. Bill and I are sitting in a restaurant in Las Vegas, talking about—what else?—money. Specifically, we were discussing how to make more of it. The prize money in those days had a lot fewer zeros on the checks than they do today.

“It’s show business, Jimmy,” Bill says. “Movies, TV, records, concerts. That’s where the real money is nowadays and that’s where you want to be.”

“Well, what’s stopping us? I can sing a little.”

“Show me.”

I go through a few bars of “White Christmas.” All right, so under that kind of pressure I folded. They were the only lyrics I could remember.

“You’re not half bad, kid. If you’re serious, I’ll see what I can do.” Really?

“I’m willing to take a shot,” I say. “Go ahead.” I mean, how long could I play tennis? I’ve gotta think about my future. Anybody got a food stamp?

Nine months later, following the Newcombe Challenge Match in Vegas, Bill and I are sitting next to Paul Anka’s cousin at dinner. The subject of me recording a song comes up and the cousin promises to introduce me to Anka. He was as good as his word and I met with Paul a week later. I didn’t even have to audition.

“Yeah, sure, Jimmy, come on in. We’ll make a record.”

Paul promised to write a couple of numbers, and when I was in New York for the US Open, I went into the studio and laid down the tracks: “Girl, You Turn Me On,” which, it seemed to me, Paul had written in 30 seconds, and “Guitar Man.” I was convinced I would be number one on
Billboard
in no time. I could even see myself on
American Top 40
with Casey Kasem.

Oh, yeah. Fat, drunk, and stupid. I can do anything.

My singing debut would be broadcast nationwide from New York’s Ed Sullivan Theater on a new TV show,
Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell
, two weeks after the US Open.

“Always take care of your business, Jimmy.” Sure, Two-Mom, that’s what I’m doing.

In 1975, Forest Hills decided to tear up their grass courts and replace them with the slower Har-Tru clay. What the hell were they thinking? The US Open was our national championship, and they decided to install a surface that was more familiar and beneficial to European and South American players. Didn’t they want homegrown winners?

Doom and gloom dominated the lead-up to the tournament, with commentators predicting that no US player would even reach the quarterfinals on the new surface. They weren’t far from the truth—only Eddie Dibbs and I made it that far—and when Borg defeated Eddie, I was the only American in the men’s semis, facing Borg. He was coming off the second of his six French Open titles and about to play on his best surface, so he was widely considered the favorite. I felt otherwise. Earlier in the week, I had the good fortune of meeting up with Pancho when he came to New York, even though he was no longer officially my coach, and we sat down to discuss tactics. Pancho suggested patience against Borg.