The Outsider: A Memoir (28 page)

My eyes are stinging from the smoke and my throat is getting sore. Funny what you’ll do for a few bucks.

I make sure we have a few rallies and somehow we get through the match. I can’t tell if the fans are satisfied or not because I can barely see them through the smoke as we make a quick getaway.

When we get to Buenos Aires, Guillermo has a confession to make.

“Now, Jimmy, the reason I brought you out here, and I know you’re not going to mind this, is that I have to win here in my country’s capital.”

“So,” I say, “I get to win in a barn where we’re almost invisible, but you take all the glory in the big city, in front of 10,000 fans—is that it?”

Guillermo shrugs his shoulders. He’s good at that.

What can I say? It’s not like it’s a high-stakes match and Willy has assured me that it won’t be televised or anything. So I play along. For two and a half hours I run him all over the court and make him work harder than he has in years. I never hit a winner, only make him hit shots. If he’s going to win, he has to pay. He wins the first set and has me 5-4 in the second when I can see him struggling, starting to cramp. Now I’ve got him right where I want him. Suddenly he runs over to Lelly, holding up his hand, which looks like
T. rex
’s claw.

“Billy, Billy, pull my fingers apart, I can’t do it. Put my racquet in my palm and then close my fingers around it. Please.” Finally he’s doing something besides shrugging.

This is too much fun. I decide to win the next game, then back off and let him take the set 7-5. I can’t stop laughing as I walk to the net to carefully shake his hand. I’ve never seen a man move like that in my life, crouched over and twisted in pain. But he’s smiling. He’s won and the crowd is happy. And I enjoyed inflicting pain on him. After all, he’s my friend. That’s what it’s all about.

Next day at the airport, we’re waiting in the lounge for our flight home when I happen to glance over at a TV. It’s a tennis match. I take a closer look. It’s a rerun . . . of . . . of Connors versus Vilas, shown live last night! Am I a sucker or what? How’s that hand, Willy? Still cramping?

18

TORMENT

M
ellowed
.

I didn’t like that word when it was used to describe me in the 1980s and I don’t like it now. Growing older, having your own family, that’s all part of it, but even then you don’t change who you are deep down. I grew up having to battle to be the best, while all the time the press and the establishment were trying to shoot me down. I learned you either fold or fight. Turns out that fighting is more fun. That belief hadn’t changed by 1986. Mellowed? Screw that.

Boca Raton, Florida. The semifinal of the Lipton International Players Championships, Friday, February 21, 1986. Me versus Lendl, fifth set, Lendl up 3-2 and serving, 30-0.

Lendl hits a slice volley; it’s sailing over the baseline. It bounces out and I hit it away.

I don’t hear the line judge’s call. Maybe I just missed it. It’s noisy here.

“Forty-love.”

I glare at the line judge. “No, no, no! You’re wrong. Admit you’re wrong.”

I get nothing back.

Jeremy Shales is in the chair. He’s been shafting me the whole match, giving me nothing and thinking he’s the show. It’s not the first time, and I’m not putting up with it anymore. That one was blatant. I charge over to him.

“You are overruling, right?”

“The ball was good, Mr. Connors. Play on.”

“You’re kidding me! The ball was
that
far out.” I show him: six inches at least.

“Play on, Mr. Connors. The score is 40-love.”

I’m snarling at him now, my blood boiling over in the steamy atmosphere. I can hear people shouting at me from the stands. What do I care? I’m standing up for my rights.

“No, you’re wrong,” I shout at Shales. “The ball was this far out. I’m not playing under these conditions. Get the supervisor out here.”

“Mr. Connors, you have 30 seconds to resume play or face a penalty point.”

“I’m not going to play under those conditions. Get the referee out here. And the supervisor. Call ’em out here. You’re the one wasting my time. Call ’em out here.” The crowd is booing louder and now I’m not sure if they’re for me or against me. I really don’t care at this point.

“Point penalty, Mr. Connors. Time violation. Game, Mr. Lendl. He leads 4-2, final set.”

“You’re the one wasting time. Get ’em out here!”

Just then Ken Farrar, the Tennis Council’s supervisor, and Alan Mills, the referee at Wimbledon, come out. They must have been watching from the side. The crowd starts to cheer. Seems like they’re on my side.

I approach Farrar. “I’ve been playing for three hours and 41 minutes, and if I’m going to stay out here and grind it out, then this is too much. That was not a judgment call. I didn’t even play the ball it was so far out.”

They try to calm me down. Like that’s gonna work. I see Lord God Almighty sitting up there in his chair looking at his stopwatch.

This is nuts. Turning back to Farrar and pointing up at Shales, I yell, “He has a job to do, and he isn’t doing it. This whole situation is fucked. I don’t want to play anymore, not if this is what it’s like. Are you gonna do something about it?”

“Jimmy,” Farrar says quietly, trying to reason with me, “you don’t want to go out like this. Let’s get back to the game.”

“Game penalty, Mr. Connors. Delaying the match. Mr. Lendl leads 5-2, final set.”

The crowd is now begging for blood. They are booing, swearing at Shales, and some of them are throwing things. I can see Patti, who’s shouting the loudest of all.

I am not backing down. No way.

“Game, set, and match, Mr. Lendl, by default.”

You know what? I don’t give a shit. I slam my racquet into my bag and sling it over my shoulder. As I do so I glance across to where Patti is sitting. I can’t help smiling.

She’s leaning forward out of her seat, a Coke in her hand, which she now launches at the umpire’s chair. Really? Well, I guess so. She was taught by the best. Despite all the crowd noise, I make out what she screams at Shales: “You bastard!”

Lendl’s victory brought him level with me in our career head-to-head, 13 matches each. More significantly, it was my eighth loss to him in a row. I hadn’t won since the Seiko Super Tennis tournament, in Tokyo in October 1984—my last tournament win up to that point, coincidentally. Number 105. The press was writing me off again. Like I wasn’t used to that.

The Lipton default cost me $25,000 in fines and a 10-week ban. How did I feel about that? The things you have to do to get some time off, right? Anyway, the suspension I received was an opportunity for me to play a couple of special events and half a dozen exhibitions. I made a hell of a lot more money than I would have playing the tournaments.

What did piss me off was the way Shales had umpired the match. I really didn’t think it was good enough. He wasn’t purposely targeting me initially (although I believe he was later, in the heat of the moment); he was simply incompetent. And he wasn’t the only one. I never argued with an umpire I didn’t think deserved it. We would be busting our guts out there with no instant replays to protect us. It’s no surprise that the players with hot tempers lose it from time to time. I think the authorities knew they weren’t delivering in the professional manner they should have been but refused to admit it. I’ll leave you with this statement from Butch Buchholz, tournament director at Boca Raton, which he made just after my default: “The officiating has been better than last year, but it’s an area we can improve. Eighteen years ago we got people out of the stands to call the lines. We’re now past that stage.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Going into Wimbledon four months later, I feel as good as I have in years. Definitely on a par with 1982. The enforced layoff has worked in my favor, making me hungry for competitive tennis. My conditioning is no problem; the exhibitions and special events have looked after that. As I hit balls with David Schneider in Holland Park the week before the start of the tournament, I honestly believe a third Wimbledon title is within reach.

“Jesus, Connors, I haven’t seen you move this well in years,” Schneider comments.

No one else seems to think that. The talk in the papers is focused on how I’ve slowed down around the court. In press conferences the same questions are repeatedly thrown my way. “How long are you going to stick around, Jimmy?” “It’s almost two years since you won, Jimmy. Are you done?”

The fact that I had to pull out of the Queen’s final with a groin strain only added to the speculation.

“Is your body trying to tell you something?”

I just smile. “I enjoy the battle and the fight. But no one is going to have to tell me when I can’t play any longer. There comes a moment when you know you’ve given everything you have and there’s nothing left. When that time comes, I’ll know.” As Two-Mom would say: Keep an element of mystery about yourself, Jimmy.

I leave them scribbling furiously, preparing my tennis obituary. I know the time hasn’t come; nowhere near it, in fact. If they want to believe otherwise, that’s fine by me.

The odds offered on a Connors win are too good to resist. This year I’m going bigger than ever. I’m not in this to go out and have a fancy dinner, I’m in it to do some serious damage. With a couple of grand laid down in a string of betting shops, I’m ready.

“You feeling good, Jimmy?” Ken, my driver, asks a couple of days before my first match. Since I arrived in London, he’s been driving me around to my practice matches and to the bookies.

“I’m thinking of getting in on some of this action,” he says.

“Yes, son, I’m feeling very good.”

At the press conference after my first-round match against Robert Seguso, the questions are the same.

“Will this be your last Wimbledon, Jimmy?”

“Will you be back next year?”

Only this time I’m not smiling. I’ve just been beaten in four sets.

I knock their questions straight back at them. “Why? You want me out of tennis? That’s your problem over here. You don’t know what you’ve got ’til you lose it. Why don’t you just let me make my own decision? That’s my worry, not yours.”

Back at the hotel and Schneider is shaking his head. We’ve both just taken a big hit.

“I’m not so mad about you or me, Jimmy,” he says to me, “but our driver, Ken—well, he’s in the soup line. Don’t know how he’s going to explain that one when he gets home.”

Oh, man, that sucks. I’d forgotten. Sometimes I should just keep my mouth shut. Looks like Ken’s gratuity just got a lot bigger.

A year later—1987—and I’m back in London. That’s something you could have bet on (and I wish did). The drama, the crowds, the excitement—it’s all part of who I am. I’m not tossing that aside lightly. As long as I feel capable of winning, I’ll keep coming back.

That’s what I feel right now. But I’m the only person on Centre Court who thinks that. It’s the fourth round and I’m playing Mikael Pernfors, from Sweden, a guy who is 11 years younger than me and was a runner-up at Roland Garros a month ago. And he’s leading 6-1, 6-1, 4-1, and I’m getting an old-fashioned ass-kicking. The crowd lost interest a long time ago. I think at this point they just want to see me put out of my misery and I don’t blame them. I’ve been struggling out here at 34; should be preparing for my afternoon nap instead of playing on Wimbledon’s Centre stage.

What they don’t know is that something miraculous just happened. It was invisible, but it definitely occurred.

On that last return, I anticipated Pernfors’s shot. That’s the first time it’s happened in the match. I knew where the ball was going and I got there and passed him down the line. It’s not that I’m suddenly trying harder. Quite the opposite. Maybe I’ve been too clever, attempting too much, putting too much pressure on myself, and now I’ve relaxed. It’s like Mom always says, “Jimmy, don’t try and be any better than you are.”

That one shot has suddenly brought the court into focus. I can see it all clearly now. This isn’t over yet. What is it inside you that makes you want to stay in there and fight instead of rolling over, like most people would, and saying it just isn’t my day? For me, I could call upon what I learned from Pancho at the very beginning. He always said it’s pride. Always walk off with your head high, no matter what the results, knowing that you have given everything that you had to give. It was much easier for me to find inspiration to plant my feet than it was to come up with reasons to surrender.

Two hours later, just before eight o’clock in the evening, I fire a match-ending two-fisted crosscourt backhand beyond Pernfors’s reach. Over the past 10 years, since the boos of 1977 faded into history, the Wimbledon crowd has given me a hell of a lot of support and encouragement. With that shot, I like to think I gave something back to the loyal fans who had stuck around. I throw my arms high in victory as the spectators rise to their feet.

A year later, in July 1988, I won my first tour event in almost four years, the Sovran Bank Classic, in DC, beating Andrés Gómez in straight sets in the final. I confess it was a relief. Although I closed the previous year at number four in the ATP world rankings, the defeats in the semis at Wimbledon (Pat Cash) and again at the Open (Lendl) frustrated me. By the time I arrived in Washington, I’d slipped to eighth in the world, not where I wanted to be or where I felt I should be. Sure, I was 35 years old, but I was determined to shove phrases like “antique” and “old man” down the press’s throats. The win over Gómez was a good way to answer my critics.

However, I couldn’t deny forever that age would eventually overtake my desire to fight on. In my mind, I still had a number of combative years ahead, but maybe, just maybe, it was time to prepare to reinvent myself again. The call from Merv Griffin in October provided the perfect opportunity.

I’d known Merv for many years. He was the creator of the mega-hit TV game shows
Jeopardy!
and
Wheel of Fortune
, a regular visitor to the La Costa Tennis Club, in San Diego, and pals with Pancho and Lornie. After a few minutes of catching up on friends and family, Merv cut to the chase, “I don’t know if you have read about it in the press, Jimmy, but Pat Sajak is stepping down as daytime host of
Wheel of Fortune
, so we’re looking for someone to replace him. What do you think about trying out?”

This is so cool. I’m stunned but flattered. Merv Griffin thinks I’ve got what it takes to host one of the most popular shows on TV!

“Just say when, Merv. I’ll be there.”

I arrived at the studio the next day, excited at the prospect of where this might lead. During our previous conversation, Merv and I had discussed how the hosting gig could work alongside my tennis. I’d been up front with him, explaining that while I was very interested in the job, I wasn’t looking to retire in favor of a career in front of the cameras. Turned out it wouldn’t be a problem. They recorded five shows a day, a week’s worth of broadcasts, and they were willing to fit the taping around my schedule. Whenever I had a free week, which I could make happen by turning down exhibitions, we could crank out five weeks’ worth in one session. In the studio they ran through everything—how to walk out on the set with co-host Vanna White, introduce the contestants, ask them questions to put them at ease, all the things I’d watched so often on TV. I was offered a script but refused, confident that I could wing it. We ran through a number of takes, and I think I did pretty good for an amateur. Sure, there were a few rough edges, but those could be ironed out. Most important, I’d felt relaxed and enjoyed myself.

A week later the producers called with disappointing, but not life-threatening news. Pat Sajak had decided to re-up as the daytime host until the New Year. Until then, they explained, plans for his daytime replacement were being put on hold. And so, I guess, was my TV stardom.

Shortly after the audition I was off to Toulouse, France, where I battled through more foot discomfort to record my second tour victory of the year. In the semis, I was pitted against my friend Andrei Chesnokov with whom I practiced all week. While hitting with him, I had noticed that his tennis shoes were worn out. The soles were flapping so bad that he had to wrap tape around them to keep the shoes together. I kept wondering how he was going to be able to play the tournament in those things but I had my own foot problem to worry about.