Wimbledon Roundup : Goldie Locks Connors Out in Second-Round Upset

He didn’t make a farewell speech, but Jimmy Connors, 36, certainly doesn’t like the way he’s playing tennis these days.

“I wish I could go out and play up to my standards,” Connors said. “If I don’t do that, it annoys me.”

So it was an annoyed Connors who left Wimbledon on a cold and gloomy Wednesday night after losing to Dan Goldie, 25, of McLean, Va., in a second-round match delayed at the start by rain for two hours.

Goldie, the 1986 National Collegiate Athletic Assn. singles champion at Stanford, added to Connors’ growing lack of success by defeating the two-time Wimbledon champion, 7-6 (7-4), 5-7, 6-4, 6-2.

It was only the fourth time in 18 Wimbledon appearances that Connors had failed to reach at least the quarterfinal round.

Connors was seeded 10th, his lowest here. He is ranked No. 13 and had defeated the 48th-ranked Goldie in two previous meetings. But Connors admitted he is not himself these days.

Until May 1, he had been in the top 10 since the weekly computer rankings started in 1973, except for one week in 1988.

But only twice since late March has Connors won more than one match in the six tournaments he has played. His 1989 singles record is 14-10. And he has never completely gotten his game in shape since he had foot surgery last fall.

His opening-round losses at Monte Carlo and Munich marked the first time in this decade that Connors had been beaten so early.

Against the hard-serving Goldie, even Connors’ usually reliable return deserted him at the wrong times. He recognized his inconsistent play against Goldie.

“It’s no different than what’s happened in the last 10 weeks for me,” Connors said. “I’ve worked hard, trained hard and things just haven’t finished up for me.”

Connors, who will be 37 in September, said he isn’t finished playing tennis, no matter what his results have been.

“I’m going to play this year and see what happens next year,” he said. “Now don’t write that I’m retiring. Don’t take that out of context.

“In terms of working at it, I did. In terms of getting in shape I did. As far as winning matches, I didn’t.”

But when he does decide to retire, Connors said he may make a contribution to the sport of tennis and those who write about it.

“I could give you guys another pain in the butt and send my son out there,” he said.

Brett Connors is 10.

Tennis Notes

More Jimmy Connors: His only earlier loss here was in the first-round in 1986, when Robert Seguso beat him in four sets. Connors, who also lost in the second round of the French Open, to Jay Berger, this year, had not had two early-round Grand Slam losses in the same year since 1972. That year, he lost in the second round of the French Open, to Tom Gorman, and in the first round of the U.S. Open to Harold Solomon.

Top-seeded Ivan Lendl advanced to the third round with a 6-7 (5-7), 6-3, 6-2, 6-2, victory over Ronnie Bathman (pronounced Bat-man), a 30-year-old Swedish qualifier ranked 311th in the world and playing only his second match of the year. “I didn’t know him,” Lendl said. “I didn’t even know what he looked like.”

Steffi Graf continued moving toward a potential quarterfinal meeting against Arantxa Sanchez Vicario. In a second-round match, Graf defeated Kim Kessaris of Hendersonville, N.C., 6-2, 6-1, and Sanchez Vicario won her first-round match by defeating Jana Pospisilova of Czechoslovakia, 6-2, 7-5. Monica Seles of Yugoslavia, who could meet Graf in the fourth round, defeated Claudia Porwik of West Germany, 6-2, 6-4, and Pam Shriver defeated Carin Bakkum of the Netherlands, 6-2, 6-1.