Jimmy Connors quotes

Jimmy Connors is an American tennis player who dominated men’s tennis in the 1970s and 1980s. Known for his fierce competitiveness and powerful two-handed backhand, he won eight Grand Slam singles titles. He is remembered as one of the sport’s most charismatic and relentless champions. Here are 26 of his quotes:

Tennis was never work for me, tennis was fun. And the tougher the battle and the longer the match, the more fun I had.

Jimmy Connors

I hate to lose more than I love to win.

Jimmy Connors

I had true rivalries. Not only did I want to beat my opponent, but I didn't want to let him up, either. I had a rivalry with Mac, Lendl, Borg. Everybody knew there was tension between us, on court and off. That's what's really ingrained in my mind: 'This is real. This isn't a soft rivalry.' There were no hugs and kisses.

Jimmy Connors

Bjorn was a different breed, I threw my best material at him, but he would never smile, but that added to the charm when he played me and Mac. We were going nuts and losing our mind and he was sitting back like he was on a Sunday stroll.

Jimmy Connors

Experience is a great advantage. The problem is that when you get the experience, you're too damned old to do anything about it.

Jimmy Connors

Rather than viewing a brief relapse back to inactivity as a failure, treat it as a challenge and try to get back on track as soon as possible.

Jimmy Connors

I think my greatest victory was every time I walked out there, I gave it everything I had. I left everything out there. That's what I'm most proud of. I can't go win Wimbledon anymore, so if what I've done in the past is not good enough, let it go. Because I'm certainly not sitting around thinking about it.

Jimmy Connors

There was never anything I wanted to do more than play tennis. Never once walked out there and thought, 'I wish I was doing something else.' Not once.

Jimmy Connors

I am not looking to be understood or liked. Like me or not, I don't care. I am an outsider, that is the way I was brought up.

Jimmy Connors

I was never part of the crowd.

Jimmy Connors

With everything else that would swirl around me when I got involved in it, tennis was my main concern.

Jimmy Connors

You have to remember that I played longer than anybody else on the main tour; I played until I was 40, and then played another six years or so on the seniors tour.

Jimmy Connors

Back in East St. Louis, tennis wasn't the real thing. If you weren't playing baseball, basketball, football, you were kind of on the outside.

Jimmy Connors

Playing in front of 25,000 people and millions more on television, and performing and doing what I worked so hard to try to accomplish was, in my opinion, the ultimate. Do I miss it? Of course I do.

Jimmy Connors

For the last five or six years the most important thing in my life has been my family.

Jimmy Connors

From where we lived, to practise in St Louis was an hour-and-a-half drive each way, so that took a lot of the time. So really, our lives just took different paths.

Jimmy Connors

But why should I read what somebody else thinks of my life when I know the real story?

Jimmy Connors

No, like I said, my dad was never really part of the tennis. His involvement around what I did with the tennis and with my mom and my grandparents was really not a part of my life.

Jimmy Connors

I always insist on my jeans being ironed. Is that a problem?

Jimmy Connors

Tennis was always there for me, which was lucky. I would go play baseball, basketball, football, hang with my brother, do whatever, and at the end of the day I'd come back and say, 'Hey, Mom, would you hit 15 minutes worth of balls with me?'

Jimmy Connors

Nothing is like being out there and playing and performing and winning - nothing. But to have an interest in the player? The nerves and everything that goes with it? Seeing what he's learned and how he's done it? That's the second best thing to playing. I think.

Jimmy Connors

It was okay for Wayne Gretzky's dad, for instance, to give him a hockey stick, or Joe Montana's dad to give him a football, or Larry Bird's dad to give him a basketball, but it wasn't okay for Gloria Connors to give her son a tennis racquet.

Jimmy Connors