Jimmy Connors

“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.”

“I always insist on my jeans being ironed. Is that a problem?”

“Every time I went out there I performed the best that I could and it was time to step back and clear my mind.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Tennis was never work for me, tennis was fun. And the tougher the battle and the longer the match, the more fun I had.”

“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.”

“I was never part of the crowd.”

“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?'”

“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.”

“I've been kicked in the teeth more times in tennis than the law ought to allow.”

“I hate to lose more than I love to win.”

“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.”

“With everything else that would swirl around me when I got involved in it, tennis was my main concern.”

“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.”

“For the last five or six years the most important thing in my life has been my family.”

“I was raised by two women, and that laid the groundwork for the way I treat 'em: with the utmost respect and admiration.”

“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.”

“But why should I read what somebody else thinks of my life when I know the real story?”