“With his emotions, with his connection to the crowd,” Renowned journalist hails Jimmy Connors for shaping tennis’ new era
Drucker credited Connors for igniting a revolution in the way tennis players are perceived.
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Jimmy Connors
American tennis legend Jimmy Connors was the undisputed face of men’s tennis in the 1970s. The former world No. 1 had a fairly long career lasting 24 years, turning professional in 1972. Connors holds three prominent Open Era men’s singles records: 109 titles, 1,557 matches played, and 1,274 match wins. The Illinois native won a joint Open Era record five US Opens, two Wimbledons, and one Australian Open.
Esteemed tennis journalist Joel Drucker credited Connors with changing the sport into what it is today. Speaking on the Tennis Channel’s INSIDE-IN podcast, Drucker, hailing the great players of that time, said, “That was part of the boom; these people emerged, the game was popular, and they were winning big matches. They were kind of creating what the tour looked like.”
Citing Connors in particular, Joel remarked, “Connors created the idea of what a compelling tennis player is. Everything we want tennis to be now has its roots in Jimmy Connors, with his emotions, with his connection to the crowd, with his passion.” Drucker authored the book ‘Jimmy Connors saved my life’, which talks about how Connors ignited a tennis revolution, personifying the notion that an athlete could be both a sports superstar and a cultural icon.
Talking about Jimmy’s focused approach to the sport and life in general, Joel said, “Well, it also has to do with wanting to hit it out of the park. Wanting to hit for the lines in life. With Connors you saw that it was visceral, it was kind of personal. It needs to be personal.”
Citing an anecdote, Drucker remarked, “There’s a story I wrote in my book about, ‘Beating someone who wouldn’t play with me’ and I didn’t like that. He was ducking me and that ticked me off and I realized that to beat him I was going to have to do something. That was the first time I saw that tennis matches aren’t just about hitting balls better, it’s personal and I wrote that this is the first time I tasted blood on a tennis court and I liked it.”
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Jimmy Connors’ career achievements and records
Connors held the top ATP ranking for a then-record 160 consecutive weeks from 1974 to 1977 and a career total of 268 weeks. In 1974, he became the second man in the Open Era to win three major titles in a calendar year and was not permitted to participate in the fourth, the French Open.
Jimmy has a career singles win/loss record of 1274/283. Connors won the Masters Cup (ATP Finals) in 1977 over Björn Borg and two World Championship Tennis Finals in 1977 and 1980, defeating Dick Stockton and John McEnroe.
He also won 16 doubles titles including the men’s doubles titles at Wimbledon in 1973 and the US Open in 1975.
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Angira D Shah
(198 Articles Published)