Nothing is like being out there and playing and performing and winning - nothing. But to have an interest in the player? The nerves and everything that goes with it? Seeing what he's learned and how he's done it? That's the second best thing to playing. I think.
— Jimmy Connors
I always insist on my jeans being ironed. Is that a problem?
I was raised by two women, and that laid the groundwork for the way I treat 'em: with the utmost respect and admiration.
With everything else that would swirl around me when I got involved in it, tennis was my main concern.
Back in East St. Louis, tennis wasn't the real thing. If you weren't playing baseball, basketball, football, you were kind of on the outside.
But why should I read what somebody else thinks of my life when I know the real story?
You have to remember that I played longer than anybody else on the main tour; I played until I was 40, and then played another six years or so on the seniors tour.
I was never part of the crowd.
I hate to lose more than I love to win.
New Yorkers love it when you spill your guts out there. Spill your guts at Wimbledon and they make you stop and clean it up.
I've been kicked in the teeth more times in tennis than the law ought to allow.
I think my greatest victory was every time I walked out there, I gave it everything I had. I left everything out there. That's what I'm most proud of. I can't go win Wimbledon anymore, so if what I've done in the past is not good enough, let it go. Because I'm certainly not sitting around thinking about it.
I had true rivalries. Not only did I want to beat my opponent, but I didn't want to let him up, either. I had a rivalry with Mac, Lendl, Borg. Everybody knew there was tension between us, on court and off. That's what's really ingrained in my mind: 'This is real. This isn't a soft rivalry.' There were no hugs and kisses.
Tennis was always there for me, which was lucky. I would go play baseball, basketball, football, hang with my brother, do whatever, and at the end of the day I'd come back and say, 'Hey, Mom, would you hit 15 minutes worth of balls with me?'
No, like I said, my dad was never really part of the tennis. His involvement around what I did with the tennis and with my mom and my grandparents was really not a part of my life.
Bjorn was a different breed, I threw my best material at him, but he would never smile, but that added to the charm when he played me and Mac. We were going nuts and losing our mind and he was sitting back like he was on a Sunday stroll.
For the last five or six years the most important thing in my life has been my family.
I would watch Gonzalez play and he mesmerized you. It would be like looking into the flame of a fire. You know you couldn't take your eyes off him because you never knew what he would do next.
Rather than viewing a brief relapse back to inactivity as a failure, treat it as a challenge and try to get back on track as soon as possible.
People don't seem to understand that it's a damn war out there.
I am not looking to be understood or liked. Like me or not, I don't care. I am an outsider, that is the way I was brought up.
There was never anything I wanted to do more than play tennis. Never once walked out there and thought, 'I wish I was doing something else.' Not once.
Playing in front of 25,000 people and millions more on television, and performing and doing what I worked so hard to try to accomplish was, in my opinion, the ultimate. Do I miss it? Of course I do.
It was okay for Wayne Gretzky's dad, for instance, to give him a hockey stick, or Joe Montana's dad to give him a football, or Larry Bird's dad to give him a basketball, but it wasn't okay for Gloria Connors to give her son a tennis racquet.
From where we lived, to practise in St Louis was an hour-and-a-half drive each way, so that took a lot of the time. So really, our lives just took different paths.
Every time I went out there I performed the best that I could and it was time to step back and clear my mind.
Tennis was never work for me, tennis was fun. And the tougher the battle and the longer the match, the more fun I had.
Use it or lose it.
Experience is a great advantage. The problem is that when you get the experience, you're too damned old to do anything about it.
