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AS HE SCREAMED AND WOBBLED and slugged and mugged through yet
another dramatic tennis match on the damnable bronzed dirt of Paris
last week, it was fashionable to wonder which institution had just
turned 100 years old, the French Open or Jheemee Konorzzz.
Even after the moonlighting TV commentator, who's known in his
hometown of Belleville, Ill., and other equally sophisticated corners
of the universe as James Scott Connors, was helped off Court Central
on Friday evening -- limping away to a prolonged chanting, stomping
ovation from 18,000 fans in the stadium and millions more watching
him (play, not comment) on televisions throughout the world -- we
were left to ponder whether this finally was the closing chapter of
tennis's version of The Old Man and the C (for clay).
''Hopefully, I'll be able to come back here and do this again next
year,'' said Connors after a torturous struggle with Michael Chang in
the most compelling match of an otherwise desultory year in men's
tennis. Then Connors giggled and rolled his eyes. He will be 39 in
September, which makes him four years older than Bjorn Borg, who
can't buy a dance ticket anymore; 11 years older than Todd Witsken,
an American whom he vanquished in a first-round upset in Paris; and
12 years older than Ronald Agenor of Haiti, who lost to Connors in
five grueling sets in the second round. And -- hold on to your
Geritol bottles, George Foreman, Mark Spitz, et al. -- Connors is
nearly 20 years older than Chang, the crown prince of patience, whom
he beat in the third round in Paris.
Beat? Well, tied. Well, O.K., won the first point of the fifth set
from. Which turned out to be the last point of the match, because
Connors could barely move about the clay anymore, much less run or
walk or scratch or claw or swing his racket. So Jimbo had to retire,
the astonishing final score reading 4-6, 7-5, 6-2, 4-6, 0-15, aban.
When a player cannot continue a match, the French say he has
abandonne, meaning the player has abandoned the match. What an
inappropriate abbreviation for a nonabbreviated match -- three hours
< and 34 minutes in late afternoon heat -- in which the only thing
Connors may have abandoned in Stade Roland Garros was his senses.
After dropping six straight games in the third set, after his back
muscles had stiffened, Connors could have -- maybe, should have --
quit right then.
Mais non. Instead Jimbo, having been turned into Gimpo but
sustained by some massage cream and the massaging roars of an adoring
audience, not only staggered through the fourth set but won it as
well. When he broke the 10th- seeded Chang's serve to go ahead 5-4,
the roar from the stands was deafening as Connors gingerly walked
with baby steps toward the sideline for the changeover respite.
''Jheemee, Jheemee,'' chanted the crowd.
Connors sat down, dumped water all over himself and draped a towel
over his head. It's surprising enough that Connors got up at the end
of the 90-second break. What's more shocking is that he walked onto
the court and served out the set to tie the match at two sets apiece.
What followed was a surprise to everyone but Connors. On Chang's
second serve of the opening point of the fifth set, Connors crushed a
backhand return winner, then peg-legged creakily to the umpire's
chair and said that he had had enough. ''Quit while I was ahead,''
said Connors later, laughing through the pain.
Bud Collins, Jimbo's broadcast partner on NBC, was above the
players' exit when Bill Norris, an ATP Tour trainer, helped Connors
off the court. Jimbo turned and blew one last kiss to the crowd.
Inside the stadium, as he was virtually carried up a stairway, a
group of players stood at the top and applauded. ''Jimmy Connors won
the last point of the match,'' Collins said in a mock report, ''but
television commitments will prevent him from entering the fourth
round.''
Hilarity and courage aside, if Connors had somehow prevailed over
Chang, a former and possibly future French champion, he would have
faced the host country's No. 1 player, seventh-seeded Guy Forget, on
Sunday in a match Jimbo was scheduled to work for NBC. Quel probleme!
''Forget about your body,'' Collins told Connors one day last week,
when the possibility loomed that he could still be in the tournament
on the weekend, when NBC began its coverage. ''I want to know, How's
your voice?''
Because of numerous injuries, Connors had played only 10 matches
since January 1990, losing seven of them, and his ranking had fallen
to 324. Although he beat the 67th-ranked Witsken in straight sets in
the first round, the match exhausted him. Afterward, Connors was
asked what it was like to compete in a tournament in which he also
was a television commentator. ''It means I have to go to work in 15
minutes,'' he said, laughing yet again.
CONNORS JUSQU'AU DERNIER SOUFFLE (''Connors Until the Last Gasp'')
screamed the daily France-Soir after Jimbo's epic battle against
Chang and Father Time. ''Hey,'' Connors said after defeating Agenor,
a tough clay-courter, mixing his tenses as well as he always has his
shots and personalities, ''this is my hometown. I was in the trenches
where I have to work and grind. When I was in my prime, I played
matches like this because I'm supposed to.''
Connors's performance in Paris was an inspiration even to the
game's current stars. ''((Connors)) feels no pressure out there at
all. It's obvious he's having a lot of fun,'' said Stefan Edberg, the
No. 1 seed.
''I saw him, and I was pleased to have someone that famous and
that good and 38 win in a clay court tournament,'' said No. 2 Boris
Becker. ''That just shows how good he must have been 10 years ago.''
Or 19 years ago, when Connors played his first French Open -- four
years before Jennifer Capriati was born. We're talkin' un vieux
garcon here, folks. And like the rabbit in the battery commercial, he
keeps going . . . and going . . . and going. The rejuvenated Connors
says his goal is ''to make the top 100, to be a factor. I want to get
my game to a level where I have a chance to win anytime I walk out
there.''
Connors's primary business in Paris was with NBC. ''But I came
with the purpose of playing into shape, too,'' said Jimbo. (He will
skip Wimbledon because NBC wants him to be a commentator
exclusively, but Connors will rejoin the circuit later this summer to
prepare for the U.S. Open in August.) ''I would have preferred not to
kill myself.''
Let's consider Connors in relation to the sport's other old
heroes. After saying he would play the French Open, Borg, who'll be
35 this week, changed his mind and did not ask for a wild card;
Guillermo Vilas, 38, was denied a wild card; Harold Solomon, 38, lost
6-3, 6-0 in the qualifying tournament for Roland Garros to the
immortal German (that's his name, not his country; he's really from
Spain) Lopez; John McEnroe, 32, was eliminated in the first round by
Andrei Cherkasov of the Soviet Union; Mats Wilander, 26, after being
embarrassed in the second round by French teenager Fabrice Santoro,
waved disgustedly to his wife in the stands, as if to say he had
finally decided to retire; and Yannick Noah, 31, France's own
dreadlocked, Cameroon-born heartthrob, has practically retired. Just
before the tournament, he announced that he would pursue a music
career, which was recently launched with an album entitled Black and
What.
In black and white, what it all means is that the only tennis
comebacks -- discounting pregnancy hiatuses -- that have ever counted
belong to Connors. That is, if you believe he has ever been away,
which Connors says he hasn't. In any case, the man won his two
Wimbledon titles eight years apart (1974 and '82) and his five U.S.
Open crowns over a nine-year span (1974, '76, '78, '82 and '83). In
1974, Connors also won the Australian Open. Fifteen years later, he
routed Edberg, 13 years his junior, 6-2, 6-3, 6-1 at Flushing Meadow.
That's Edberg's worst licking in a Grand Slam event.
If that isn't enough history and longevity, Connors also holds the
men's record for most consecutive weeks ranked No. 1 (159, from July
1974 to August 1977). He's the only man to win the U.S. Open on three
surfaces (grass, clay and hard courts). He has won more tournaments
(109) than any other man in history -- Tel Aviv in 1989 being his
last one, if you're scoring at home. ''A man of endless surprises,''
says 20-year-old Jim Courier, the ninth seed in Paris. ''Connors is
the Nolan Ryan of tennis.''
While rolling along in late '88 toward the seventh-inning stretch
of his career, Connors was knocked out of the box by foot surgery
and, in October 1989, repairs to his left wrist. This year he has
lost to the likes of Cassio Motta, but in April in Tokyo he extended
Edberg to three sets in a best-of- three encounter and announced,
''I'm back in business.''
So with his wife, Patti, and their two kids back on the ranch in
Santa Ynez, Calif., off Connors went to Roland Garros to compete in
the one Grand Slam event he has never won. Never even come close to
winning, in fact, although he might have won Paris -- and thus the
Grand Slam -- in 1974 had he not been banned from the tournament for
having played World Team Tennis. The farthest he has advanced is the
semifinals, in 1979, '80, '84 and '85. For the most part, Connors and
the French Open have given each other, in a term that a baseball man
like Ryan might appreciate, the raspberry. To wit:
-- 1980. Connors was fined $1,000 for swearing and otherwise
acting nasty ; while coming from behind to beat homeboy Jean-Francois
Caujolle, who led two sets to none and held a match point.
-- 1981. Incensed by an overrule by umpire Chou Lu, Connors raged,
shook the ump's chair, threatened to smack him with a ball and won
only eight points in a 6-0 final-set loss to Jose-Luis Clerc.
-- 1982. Connors demeaned a fourth-round match between top-seeded
Ivan Lendl and Wilander, the game's new star, saying he had needed No
Doz to watch their baseline encounter. As for his own effort, Jimbo
won just six games in a quarterfinal loss to Jose Higueras.
-- 1983. Angered by the way in which the French press portrayed
his estrangement from Patti, Jimbo lost to the unknown Christophe
Roger-Vasselin and made another controversial exit, complaining about
''clay specialists.'' It was about then that Paris writers began
referring to Connors as le Grognon (''the Grumbler'').
-- 1984. Connors's always stormy relationship with McEnroe bubbled
to the surface during a semifinal matchup that L'Equipe headlined LES
DEUX CANNIBALES AMERICAINS. As Mac was questioning a line call on his
way to a straight-sets victory, Jimbo approached the net, yelling and
pointing at his younger countryman. ''Shut up! Grow up!'' Connors
shouted. ''You're a baby. I've got a son your age.'' He then erased
McEnroe's ball mark with his foot.
Connors's metamorphosis from scatological scoundrel to Mr. Warmth
probably has everything to do with his interest in preparing for a
career after tennis. Undoubtedly realizing that he would soon be a
media dog himself, Connors apologized a few years ago to journalists
on French TV for being unable to do interviews ''in your language.''
Collins, whom Connors once addressed as '' -- -- hole'' and whom
Jimbo once whapped with a tennis bag to avoid an interview, is now
his good Bud.
And so it went last week, Connors continuing to see the light in
the City of Light. Following his 3-hour-and-39-minute marathon
victory over Agenor, which turned on a call in the fifth set, after
Connors had slyly forced an umpire's overrule on an apparent Agenor
ace, Jimbo was asked what he thought of his next foe, Chang. ''He's
younger than I am,'' said Connors.
''Everybody is,'' said Sal Zanca of the Associated Press.
In the old days, such a remark would have produced a stream of
four-letter Jimboian invective. This time, however, he laughed and
said, ''That's cold.''
''The part maniac in him gives Jimmy a chance to win ((against
Chang)), but it's not likely,'' said Andre Agassi, echoing the
locker-room scuttlebutt. From the beginning, Connors was up to his
old/new, full-maniac act: pumping his arms, kibitzing with
linespersons and ball children, gasping for breath, stoking himself,
playing the crowd better than he ever has and, ultimately, having the
fun match of his life. ''Getting old is a bitch,'' said Connors at
one point to Becker's manager, Ion Tiriac, who was sitting in the
first row.
After the players had split the first two sets, a courtside phone
began ringing in the first game of the third. ''Tell my wife, Patti,
I'm being good, don't worry!'' screamed Connors. But soon, he was a
hurting, creaking old man. Norris appeared twice to aid Connors, but
the crowd -- ''Allez, Jheemee, allez'' -- carried him through that
remarkable fourth set.
''He must get his energy from his guts, or somewhere,'' Chang
would later say. ''I didn't really care if Jimmy was injured. He was
still hitting great shots -- flat, sliced, lots of penetration. He
kept coming at me. I couldn't consider his age. The guy is Jimmy
Connors. We all know how he is, because of who he is.'' From the
mouth of a babe -- and such a tribute.
When Chang broke serve to make the score 4-4 in the fourth set,
the weary veteran looked for all the world to be finished. Mais non.
Encore! Moving just so -- setting up, taking aim -- Connors fired
four withering blasts in the next game to break back at love. He
paused to bask in the acclaim, saluted the crowd and then limped to
the changeover. A few minutes later, after he had served out the set,
all of France seemed to envelop Connors with praise and passion.
Then, on the shakiest of legs, he hung on for that one final winning
stroke before he approached umpire Bruno Rebeuh and bowed to the
inevitable. ''I can't move my back anymore. I'm trying my ass off out
here,'' he told Rebeuh, who urged him to continue.
After undergoing an ice massage, stretching and getting an IV
solution of sodium and potassium, Connors was able to dress himself,
sit up and speak about the sorrowful joy of what had happened. ''I've
been run ragged, my back's stiff, and I feel like -- -- ,'' he said.
''But, boy, was it fun. To get a stadium rocking like that is a kick
you can't believe.''
Ah, Jheemee. Not unless it's anything close to the marvelous kick
everybody in Paris got watching you.
Copyright 1991 Time Inc.
CURRY KIRKPATRICK, AS HE SCREAMED AND WOBBLED and slugged and mugged
through yet.
Sports Illustrated, 06-10-1991, pp 32. Copyright © 1999 Infonautics Corporation. All rights reserved.
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