Connors Impedes Youth Movement

A U.S. Open champion has been defrocked, his title stripped in the quarterfinals, his claim to fame now just a shining New York minute . . . and, oh, what a relief it is?

“I think maybe things might calm down a little bit,” Pete Sampras said Thursday, moments after his straight-set loss to Jim Courier. “I am not the reigning U.S. Open champion anymore and, you know, the monkey is off my back just a little bit. So maybe I can really bear down and have a real good fall this year.”

A real good fall?

When did Flushing Meadows become a tuneup for Sydney, Tokyo, Tel Aviv and the exhibition super-series of greater south-eastern Texas?

Jimmy Connors shakes his head. In disgust, he waves both hands, as if he’s attempting to freshen the air.

“That is the biggest crock, the bigger dump I have heard,” Connors said, barely refraining from spitting. “Being ‘relieved’ not to be the U.S. Open champion.

“I spent my whole life trying to win seven of these in a row or whatever you can do. And that is the greatest feeling you could have--to be the U.S. Open champion and try to do it again. That is what you live for.

“If these guys aren’t living for that, then something is wrong. Don’t talk to me about these guys being relieved. If that’s the case, something is wrong with the game and wrong with them.”

Connors sets his jaw and thrusts out his bottom lip. His face flushes red.

“Is that strong enough for you?”

Eras have collided in this U.S. Open and, in an inspiring subplot, the good old days are hanging tough. Half the men’s semifinal draw has that bygone feel from The Borg Years--Lendl is in, Connors is in--and a third member of the Final Four, Stefan Edberg, has won two Wimbledons and two Australian Opens. The flashes in the pan have been extinguished, relegated to their heavy-metal sneaker commercials and their Movado watch endorsement contracts.

Andre Agassi, out to prove that Image Is Everything can be more than an advertising pitch, lost here in the first round.

Michael Stich, whose bang-bang approach to the sport turned the last Wimbledon final into two-strokes-and-a-cloud-of-grass, lost to Lendl on Thursday. Connors watched that final from the NBC broadcasters’ booth, watched it with disdain. “Lawrence Welk tennis,” he calls it. “A one and a two and a . . . “

Now Sampras is gone, too, joining a growing list of 90s Wunderkind who couldn’t keep up with a 39-year-old whose only brand of “power tennis” was played with his mouth.

Eleven months removed from career-threatening wrist surgery, Connors has landed in his 14th U.S. Open semifinal. He got there by thoroughly intimidating another youngster, 25-year-old Paul Haarhuis of the Netherlands, after carelessly tossing away the first set to see who would bite.

Haarhuis didn’t. He didn’t bite, he didn’t fight--plodding through a fourth-set lull Connors termed “unbelievable” and failing to put away three piece-of-cake overheads that swayed the second set, and the match, to Connors’ favor. Three points away from a two sets-to-none deficit, Connors prevailed in 2 hours 55 minutes, 4-6, 7-6, 6-4, 6-2.

“For me to get out of there in less than three hours,” said Connors, this Open’s marathon man, “that’s something.”

This isn’t how it’s supposed to work. The older you get, the longer the tournament lasts, the matches aren’t supposed to get easier.

But this has been a gilded run for Connors--some would say a little too tailor-made. He is 5-0, but against who? The wrong McEnroe, Patrick. Another low-flying Dutchman, Michiel Schapers, a qualifier. Karel Novacek. Aaron Krickstein.

Connors should have faced Agassi in the round of 16, but Krickstein took care of The Menace.

Connors should have faced Boris Becker in the quarters, but Becker limped through his third-round match with a bad thigh and lost in straight sets to Haarhuis.

Next, it should have been Sampras, the defending champion, but Sampras grew tired of playing defense and now it’s Courier standing in the way of an unthinkable appearance in Sunday’s final.

“There is no describing this,” Connors said. “I mean, like I said the other night--how can you not laugh at this? I can’t even spit it out . . .

“You know, I am playing well enough to be here. I am going to say that I’m playing some pretty darn good tennis and I’m playing against the best players in the world, but, I mean, is this for real?”

If it is, what does the presence of Connors and his creaking game from the Paleolithic say about these semifinals and this wave of tennis millionaires?

Connors loves questions like those.

“I am saying I am playing against the greatest players in the world,” he stated slowly, straining to sustain the deadpan.

Connors will, however, say this about winning U.S. Opens:

“When I broke in, the game I got into was that you’re not really considered a great player until you win a U.S. Open or a Wimbledon or a French or something like that,” he said. “That puts a lot of pressure on a lot of the young guys and there are a lot of great players out there that, you know, just don’t win these tournaments. So when I won in ‘74, it was like, whoosh, what a letdown.”

Connors was hooked. The only way to reclaim the high was to reclimb the mountain.

One U.S. Open wasn’t enough.

Five U.S. Opens aren’t enough.

Monkey on the back? Connors always was an animal lover.

“It’s been a great run,” Connors said. And, relishing every syllable, he was able to add what Sampras couldn’t.

“And it’s not over yet.”