STILL SWINGING : Connors Shows He Can Still Make a Crowd Roar

Attacking was the only way Jimmy Connors ever played a match. Leaving the U.S. Open crowd on its feet beating its hands and shouting its lungs out was what he always wanted.

The old flame in Connors dies hard. He gives no quarter, and not too much credit to the likes of 19-year-old Andre Agassi. If Agassi is the future of American tennis, it will be some time before he can replace Connors in the appreciation of American tennis past.

Agassi beat the 37-year-old Connors in five sets Thursday, but it was as close as a heartbeat at the end. And every heart beat true for Connors. It was 6-4 in the fifth set and Connors was left to make his own prideful daydream: That one loose volley with a jet roaring overhead, one attacking forehand he couldn’t lift over the net.

“Winning that game for 5-all, damn!” Connors said. “I’ll dream about that.”

Connors bristled at the suggestion that he could be happy at having come so close. He is this great competitor. And don’t you forget it! But all the while it was clear that he wouldn’t mind taking it as a victory. For that man to get to the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open and almost beat the top-ranked American, wasn’t that hot stuff.

“Is that what I like?” he said. “Yeah, that’s what I like. That’s what people will remember after I’m gone, and that’s the best.”

Connors was always the enfant terrible -- even after he was married and had children. He grumbled and roared and whined at linespeople and chair umpires, as he did Thursday. He made vulgar gestures, uttered obscene expressions and did coarse things.

But for nearly two decades he was one of the handful of tennis players in the world worth the price of admission. They played pitty-pat, a hundred moonballs at a time, and this spindly twerp was charging to take the ball on the rise, hitting at daring angles, as he did Thursday. He returned service so well that he made an opponent’s best weapon a liability.

In the first set it was immediately apparent that Connors was 37 and Agassi was 19. Connors first won this tournament in 1974, and in 1983 he won his fifth and probably his final U.S. Open. For five years he’s won next to nothing. Now it looked sickeningly reminiscent of the thrashing Connors gave 39-year-old Ken Rosewall in ’74

But Connors feels the heart of this tournament belongs to him. Agassi, with his Las Vegas showgirl blond hair below his shoulders, shirttails flapping and teen angel acid-wash denim shorts, may own the hormones of the teeny-bop set that squeals for him outside the clubhouse. Inside the stadium, where so many of the seats have corporate identification and the spectators have a touch of gray in their hair, youth is not served readily.

In the era of grass, Connors was the player most likely to have green on his shorts and his knees. Among tennis players, Connors was more like a soul brother to Pete Rose.

In New York, where tennis is seen as something closer to a sports event than to a philharmonic concert, Connors had his niche. He had outlived his nemesis, Bjorn Borg, and the flame in John McEnroe.

And Connors was being embarrassed. He still hits the ball flat, in the inches above the net, and Agassi likes that topspin forehand. He was working Connors from corner to corner, making the old man strain.

Connors was sickened by the exertion. His shirt and his heart were drenched. The grunts that accompany his strokes sounded like cries of pain. He said to his wife, Patti, at courtside: “I’m not going to make it through the match.” They were going to have to carry him out on his shield.

“Don’t write that I lost because I was sick,” Connors insisted. “That’s not true.” He threatened to track down anyone who dared write it.

Also remember that Agassi beat Connors in straight sets at the same intersection last year and said, actually, he’d expected it to be easier. Connors wasn’t going to go easily to that kid.

Connors found the reserve, which is what the best of them do. A man does not play 19 years in the U.S. Open without learning some of the tricks. He stalled. Once when he was behind, he played the old what-happened-to-the-ball trick. And he taught respect.

Agassi has all these elders in his entourage. Perhaps they told him not to say anything like that again. “All I knew was that he was 36 years old last year, and that was a little naive on my part,” Agassi said. He paid tribute.

He also stopped playing his game. He started to play Connors’ game, but without Connors’ lust for the battle. Agassi stayed back; Connors went for the net, tried to end the points before they made him feel his age.

As Connors came back, forcing Agassi to play the first five-set match of his career, Connors knew what to look for. Connors always asks just one chance at the match; he wouldn’t be the one to choke.

“Yes, he was gagging,” Connors said, “but I started too late.” He was down 4-0 in the fifth set before he began to turn the pressure onto Agassi.

Too late. But Connors had the sound of the crowd. “They’re my favorite,” he said. He had given them their money’s worth, and he had given some more to the gray-heads who aren’t ready to cede the world to denim shorts and bleached hair.