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Jimmy Connors: 12 things I learned from Connors memoir 'The Outsider'

Here are a dozen interesting items from "The Outsider: A Memoir" by tennis great Jimmy Connors.

3. Trusty steel racket

RON FREHM/AP
Jimmy Connors, his Prince Valiant haircut flying, smashes a return to Roscoe Tanner in a US Open Tennis Championships match, Sept. 8, 1974 at Forest Hills, N.Y. Connors banged out a 7-6, 7-6, 6-4 victory over Tanner and and advanced to face Australia’s Ken Rosewall in the finals.

  • By Ross Atkin Staff writer

Most of Connors’s greatest victories were achieved playing with his beloved Wilson T2000 racket, which he became so attached to that he literally slept with it. The romance began when he saw the steel-framed, open-throated racket demonstrated at a junior tournament in Miami in 1964. Connors immediately liked its silver, modern look.

The Wilson sales rep, a friend of Jimmy’s mother, said that even though the racket was a one-off he would see what he could do to get Jimmy his own T2000. Soon four arrived at their home in the mail, but without strings.

It took Connors’s grandfather some tinkering before he finally figured out how to string the unusual frame, and it took months before Jimmy mastered playing with the racket, which provided more power to his shots. He says he realized that while others wouldn’t have the patience to make the switch to the T2000, it would allow him to make shots that previously had been impossible for him.

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Mark Sappenfield
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