Jimmy’s Changes Mirror Our Own

The man responsible for the great American tennis booms of ’74 and ’91 sat in the U.S. Open interview room for the last time this year, assessing a defeat that came five rounds later than expected and an opponent who’d just done to Connors what Connors did to Ken Rosewall 17 summers ago.

The initials are the same: J.C.

The approaches are the same: Baseline-aggressive, hit ‘em till they drop.

Even the hokey baseball analogies, which every American tennis champion must have, are the same: “He plays like Pete Rose,” they say--to which Jim Courier appends, “Pre-scandal.”

But try to lure Connors along on this story line--”Does Courier remind you of you?”--and soon you have a sense of what Paul Haarhuis must have felt, smashing himself into overhead oblivion during Thursday night’s quarterfinal.

“Nobody reminds me of me,” Connors said flatly. “I don’t mean disrespect to anybody, it’s just that nobody does. Nobody’s game does and, you know, I haven’t really been around these young guys enough to know if their attitude does or not.”

No brag, just fact?

Courier wasn’t arguing. At the conclusion of his 6-3, 6-3, 6-2 semifinal triumph Saturday afternoon, Courier shook Connors’ hand and told him, “You are unbelievable.” A half-hour later, Courier told the assembled media, “I don’t know if we will ever see anybody like him again.”

Courier may be blinded by the light, but who among us hasn’t been during the past two weeks? Connors got a country talking about tennis again, at a time when “Isn’t that Agassi a jerk?” was the extent of the exchange. With a two-fisted backhand, Connors smacked the baseball pennant races and the start of the football season off the top of the sports page. On ESPN, he was Big Brother in reverse--he was everywhere and you were watching.

Connors even turned up on Nightline, which described his U.S. Open run at 39 “a phenomenon” and devoted an entire show to the hero of the American “old fogie.”

Connors said he hadn’t seen the segment. “I was sleeping,” he said, revealing at least one concession he has made to age.

“Old fogie” didn’t seem to bother Connors, though. He said Vitas Gerulaitis has been calling him the same thing, in a somewhat cruder form, for the past 10 years.

But again, Connors stopped to remind: Don’t point that label gun at me. He came here to pad his ATP ranking and his ATM account--not necessarily in that order--and he did not come to convert the couch-potato masses. We already have one Richard Simmons, and that’s one too many. One Jimmy Connors is plenty, too, which is a point Connors won’t contest.

Connors hawks the one-of-a-kind theme at every turn. His only message to the middle-aged and heavy-middled:

Do not try this at home.

“I’m not carrying a flag for guys 35 to 45 years old,” Connors said. “I’m really not. I don’t want to tell them, ‘Hey, don’t sit down, don’t do this, don’t do that.’ I’m just out there doing what I love to do and if somebody along the way picks up on it and says, ‘Hey, that’s pretty neat, I like that,’ then that’s good.

“I mean, I like looking up there and seeing 35- and 45-year-old people in the stands because that’s my age, those are the people I grew up with. But I’m not carrying a banner out there.”

No banner is required. Part of the Connors phenomenon entails cursing, squalling, stomping, spitting and shamelessly playing to the crowd, all while on the cusp of 40.

Feel years younger . . . and act it, too. If this was the way to go for everybody, every place would be New York City.

Yet Connors needs to be followed, at least as far as the bleacher seats. Every opponent he faces now is younger and, most likely, stronger. Jennifer Capriati serves harder--and that’s not an exaggeration. A speed gun traces the serves struck inside Louis Armstrong Stadium and flashes the results on a small digital board. In her semifinal, Capriati often hit 100, 102 miles per hour. In his semifinal, Connors usually clocked in at 88 to 95.

At 39, Connors gets along on experience and adrenaline. The experience is his own, but the adrenaline is borrowed, which is the reason behind the windmill fist pumps and the finger-pointing grandstanding. He has to fire up the crowd in order to light his own fuse.

“About 15, 20 years ago,” he said, “I was able to fight not only my opponent and the linesmen, but the crowd also, and I liked it. It was me against everybody and that was the way I liked it at the time.

“In the past 8 or 9 years, there’s been not only a bit of a change in me, but a change in a lot of the people also. . . . The people grew up with me along the way--they were the ones who came out 20 years ago and are still coming out today to watch. They have seen a good change in me and, vice versa, me in them.

“That’s why I’ve always loved it here. When they were against me, I loved it. Now that they’re with me, I love it. At this point in time, I can’t fight 20,000 people anymore.”

He needs to enlist them, which was Connors’ major failing Saturday. Courier’s domination was so thorough, so relentless, that the bandwagon never got out of the garage.

Stadium court was quiet. Too quiet for Connors to do any good.

Seventeen years ago, Connors won his first U.S. Open title, blitzing a 39-year-old Rosewall by a margin so overwhelming it is now tennis lore, referred to simply as “One, oh and one”--6-1, 6-0, 6-1.

Saturday’s result was not nearly as gruesome, but it was a rout and, just as it had in 1974, the spoils went to a 22-year-old victor named James.

So the question was given a twist and served to Courier. Could he compare himself to Connors?

He’d like to.

“There is no doubt that I have emulated Jimmy’s guts, or have tried,” Courier said. “I mean, nobody can match his guts out there, but that is my goal. One of my goals as a tennis player is to be known as never being out of a match and just to be a gutsy competitor out there.

“And Jimmy is, you know, the one. He is the one everybody looks up to.”

Do it long enough and maybe the cheers at Stadium Court might one day belong to Courier. Saturday, Courier’s ears were open. He heard the cadence of the crowd. He could tell the subtle difference.

“My name,” Courier said, “isn’t ‘Jimmy.’ ”