His Last Spring in Paris? : Tennis: At 38, Jimmy Connors has turned back the clock with inspiring play at the French Open.

In his heart, Jimmy Connors knows this should be it: his last springtime in Paris. He admits he’s more television personality than athlete at this point, pushing 39 and so stiff after a five-set match that a doctor and trainer have to work him over for two hours before he can emerge, shuffling stiffly, boyish grin and irreverent humor intact, willing as always to talk about his life as a legend.

But the idea makes him wince.

“Usually the word legend is reserved for those who don’t do anything anymore,” Connors said. “I’m still trying to give you some things to write about.”

That he has in the first two rounds of the centennial French Open. Connors, a wild-card entrant at Roland Garros, surprised Todd Witsken, No. 67 in the world to Connors’s 324. The more operative number in the comparison, however, is 11: Witsken is 11 years younger than Connors.

“It just shows how good he must have been 10 years ago,” Boris Becker, No. 2 in the world, said after Connors beat Witsken.

That was to be it, a nice little vignette. But then Connors went out Wednesday and hung with Ronald Agenor of Haiti for five hot and bothered sets, including a fourth in which he was whitewashed, before emerging victorious as the French children filling the stands to overflow on “School Day” stood and screamed “Jimmy, Jimmy” between rhythmic clapping.

“He’s a man of endless surprises to us all,” said Jim Courier, an American ranked ninth in the world. “He’s the Nolan Ryan of tennis.”

Then Courier paused. “Maybe Nolan Ryan is the Jimmy Connors of baseball.”

Connors is the only man to win the U.S. Open on three surfaces--grass (1974), clay (‘76) and hard court (‘78, ‘82, ‘83). He holds the all-time record of tournaments won (109). And he holds the all-time record for weeks as the No. 1 man in tennis, 159 weeks, from July 29, 1974, through Aug. 16, 1977.

In recent years, most of Connors’s visibility has been on the other side of a microphone, as a TV commentator for NBC, a role that is sure to last longer here than his role as a contender. In the last year, when TV demands haven’t inhibited his playing schedule, injury has.

A sprained wrist wiped out most of 1990 for Connors, who played only three matches and had surgery Oct. 9. He first match back early this year in Chicago, he was blitzed by Jaime Yzaga. A victory over Udo Riglewski in Florida marked Connors’s first on the tour since October 1989.

So he hauled himself to Europe, to Madrid, to play on clay and get ready for Paris. He lost in the first round to Cassio Motta but it was a victory of sorts: Connors’s first time on clay in two years.

And now here he is, an old hard-court serve-and-volleyer holding forth as though he were born for these pulverized bricks.

There has been little rain in Paris in weeks, so the courts are as hard as they can be. And Connors’s next opponent, Michael Chang, among others, has said a change to Dunlop balls a few years ago gave more spring to the play here and more chances to employ a net game.

Connors, of course, doesn’t know how to play any other way than rambling and gambling, so you can be sure he will be hard by the net Friday, hoping against hope to smash baseliner Chang into oblivion even though Chang is a former champion here and half Connors’s age.

The generation gaps don’t bother Connors, who has the gift of seeing things clearly. Asked, for example, why the umpire came off his chair to check out a line dispute for Connors but would not do the same for Agenor, Connors repled, “Because of my age.”

Of Chang, he said: “He’s younger than I am and his game is running ... but I can’t worry about that. I’m happy to be playing him.”

The happiness is obvious and no doubt an asset. “I guess he feels no pressure when he goes out there,” said Stefan Edberg, pressed at No. 1 by Becker. “He just has fun.”

There are few accomplishments that have eluded Connors, but a title at Roland Garros is one. He played his first French Open in 1972, the year Chang was born. After Connors lost in the first round of the 1973 French, he stayed away until 1979, missing some of his most productive years.

He’d like to rectify that, but this is a man of few regrets.

“I’m not in the game to achieve anything,” Connors said. “I’ve already achieved everything I want.”

Now he’d like to do it all again, or at least part of it. He’ll skip Wimbledon because of TV commitments and worry about how his wrist would react to balls ricocheting off the slick grass. But he’ll be at his beloved U.S. Open, with a full fall schedule on tap.

He wants to be in the top 100 but will play only so long as he feels in every game, he says. “If I don’t feel like I have a chance when I walk out there,” Connors said, “I’d rather be doing something else.”