Profile: A fighter raging against time

IT WAS September 1977 and the last rites of Forest Hills as the US Open venue were being read. Raucously. Guillermo Vilas, an Argentinian, was being carried head-high round the court, the crowd thrilled by his victory in the men's final. His opponent was American but was so despised for his brashness, vulgarity and success that jingoism had been tossed away like a redundant, ketchup-stained hot-dog wrapper.

Fifteen years on there was another flagrant demonstration of emotion at the US Open on Wednesday as the Stadium Court welcomed one of its own. An ovation, chilling in its sincerity, broke out at his appearance from the bowels of Flushing Meadow and rumbled for two hours until it exploded to its full strength again after his first-round victory. 'We love you,' the T-shirts proclaimed unnecessarily. No superlative was spurned in the haste to hurl praise upon him.

A different era, a new venue and a metamorphosed atmosphere, but the hurt young man who had stormed out of the West Side Tennis Club with the words 'I've had it with these people, I'm moving to Monte Carlo' and the object of admiration this week, were the same person. James Scott Connors.

Time has been kind to the left-hander from Illinois in more ways than the one that allows him to defy nature by continuing to play in tennis's upper echelons at the age of 40. The years have turned his image 180 degrees while he has altered barely at all. As Arthur Ashe put it: 'He has always been a jerk, but now it seems he's everyone's favourite jerk.' Jimmy Connors is the same. The rest of us have changed.

The tide that has turned Connors into every American family's favourite uncle is staggering. On Friday night, when he lost 3-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-0 to another veteran, Ivan Lendl, he was not above resorting to gamesmanship, while obscene language, mockery and gestures steeped in sexual innuendo still flow from a man who at his age ought to know better. But all is forgiven. He has fought, clawed and forced affection from people who have been attracted by his rage against Father Time.

In America, where 'Thou shalt not grow old' could be the 11th Commandment, he has become more than mere sporting hero. To the young he is an icon of durability, an example of mind over body; to the middle-aged he is a lingering souvenir from their former years, proof that their youth has not entirely been jettisoned. Even the ageing patricians of the US Tennis Association, a body lacerated with two decades' worth of wounds from his tongue and behaviour, have warmed to him. It was their cake that was brought on court on Wednesday to mark the prodigal father's 40th birthday.

Even in defeat he can do no wrong. As Friday night turned to yesterday morning and he was beaten by Lendl, the crowd's reaction was the same. 'Jimmy, Jimmy' rang from the stands as if the mathematics of defeat, like his age, were irrelevant. Needless to say, his match had been held back for peak viewing time. 'When Jimmy and McEnroe retire we won't care who plays at night,' an American television executive said this week, not entirely tongue in cheek.

The birthday bash, too, had been screened live, but Connors has truly had his cake and eaten it throughout his career. With a serve that would not strike fear in the women's game and a less than reliable forehand, he has taken eight grand slam titles and become a rare commodity, a legend who can still show more than glimpses of his greatness 10 years past his prime. All achieved by a strength of purpose that is the envy of men 20 years his junior. Fight? Connors would scrap with dogs for a bone if he thought it would give his tennis an edge.

'My attitude now is exactly what it was 22 years ago,' he said this week. 'I don't like losing. On my birthday, with the people there, I'd have done anything to win that match. Anything. No matter how long it would have taken.' Monica Seles, whose match with Claudia Porwik had acted as a warm-up for the Connors-Lendl meeting, said: 'At 40 hopefully I'll be married and having some children. To think that Jimmy is playing at such a high level at his age is really incredible. There will just be one Jimmy Connors. He is unreal.'

The man who has provoked contrasting emotions for two decades was brought up by his mother Gloria and his maternal grandmother, and was socially from the wrong side of the tracks which, some would say, has not been his natural habitat since. Connors swaggered into tennis's highest tier in his first year as a professional, 1972, winning the first of 109 singles titles in Jacksonville, Florida, with a ferocious return of serve and a backhand that could make his elders blanch.

Here was a young man with a chip on his shoulder who took his adolescent frustration wholeheartedly out on a tennis ball. Armed with one of the game's earliest metal rackets, he shook the established order and two years later destroyed the 39-year-old Ken Rosewall, 6-1, 6-0, 6-1 to win Wimbledon. That year he also claimed the Australian and US Open titles.

'Rosewall? He was the man,' Connors said as he weighed up his position now with the Australian's in 1974. 'He was the legend. He was the one who had put his reputation on the line for a quarter of a century and here was my opportunity to enter where he'd been for 25 years.

'My upbringing was that of - I don't want to say no respect - but I refused to be intimidated. That's the way I play. I knew if I didn't get him then I might not get another chance.'

Connors pounced on his opportunity and for 159 weeks (July 1974 to August 1977) he held the world's No 1 position - a record - until more naturally gifted players like Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe began to exploit his weaknesses. Suddenly, he was no longer the cock of the roost and the public's perception of a man they had seen as the prototype American tennis brat began to change. As a consistent winner he was regarded as obnoxious; when he fought like a tiger to overcome his vulnerability he was altogether a more attractive proposition.

Nine years have passed since the last of Connors' five US Open titles was greeted with unreserved enthusiasm, and since then there has been an annual strengthening of an alliance between player and spectator. To say Connors plays up to the crowd now would be erroneous; the spectators showboat for him. The more so since his extraordinary performance last year.

Then, he became the oldest semi-finalist in a grand slam event since Rosewall 18 years ago, surviving two five-set late-night matches before being beaten by Jim Courier a match from the final. Stefan Edberg was the name that was engraved on the US Open trophy at the end of that fortnight but it was Connors who had provided the starkest image, coming to a press conference attached to a saline drip after a gruelling five-hour match with Aaron Krickstein.

That night, his 39th birthday, he needed a team of doctors and physios to help him through the consequences of bending the limits middle age imposes on a sportsman. Yet he won his next match to secure staggering popularity. Barely an advertising break on CBS's coverage of this year's tournament passes by without Jimbo endorsing a product; it is an impossibility to pass 10 spectators at Flushing Meadow without at least one wearing a shirt with 'One More Time' emblazoned across it.

'My matches have become more than sport here,' Connors said in wonder rather than conceit. 'It's entertainment. The whole atmosphere is beyond tennis. I hate to say this but it's the way tennis was in the Seventies and early Eighties when you walked in and there was electricity here. When Borg, McEnroe, Nastase and Gerulaitis were playing you looked at your sheet and you didn't know where to go. There were too many great matches. It was buzzing. I walk in now and it's 'whoa' for me. It set me back a bit. I said: 'Boy, it's not supposed to be like this any more.' '

It is like that now and is likely to remain for the foreseeable future as Connors, unlike McEnroe, has no plans for retirement. He will play a reduced schedule next year of eight ATP tournaments while devoting the rest of his time to the 35 Tour, a new project for ageing players. 'That is all my buddies that I grew up with,' he said. 'I played some of those guys when I was eight and they have far more for me than this tour does. I've been here for eight or nine years by myself. It's lonely out here for me.

'I don't play because I have to - I don't need the money or want to get away from home - I do it because I really love playing tennis. My career has four generations of players in there but my game continues to keep up with the best of the day. I just love playing against the great young players. That is my fun. As long as I have fun doing it then I'll continue playing.'

He was having fun even in defeat early yesterday morning. 'He can play, believe me, he can still play,' Lendl said. The despised figure of 15 years ago is revelling in his changed role. 'The people in the stands are not 25 and under,' he said, 'they are 35 and over and have been watching me for 20 years. A lot of them didn't like me then but they've stayed around to watch. It's part of me now. It's the sports fan and his reaction to me that make it all worthwhile.'

That reaction is guaranteed. Connors may linger to sample it for some time yet.

(Photograph omitted)