The Outsider: A Memoir Page 3

  I liked hanging around while Mom was teaching the local kids. I’d listen to the instructions she was giving her students and hope that some of it would rub off on me. Two-Mom was the greatest ball picker-upper of all time, and when Mom was teaching, Two-Mom would have an old-fashioned apple box and go around the court doing her thing. The box was always full—she took no breaks.

  In the summer, Mom would teach eight or nine hours a day. When lunchtime came around, Two-Mom would stick a sandwich through the fence so Mom didn’t have to stop. After having those two as role models, was I ever going to give up? These were the kinds of lessons I learned without anyone saying a word.

  As the years passed, tennis became a bigger part of my day. Along with teaching tennis, Mom also had to carve out some court time for me. You have to remember that we are talking about the 1950s and 1960s, way before indoor tennis clubs came into existence. Anywhere I could play was a privilege.

  Being brought up in Illinois was no picnic. Cold winters and hot, humid summers were the norm. There were times when we had to chip ice off our backyard court so that we could practice. I remember one winter when Mom, Two-Mom, and I were going to play on a locked court. We had a bucket of balls, racquets, and a little pick to work the lock and chip off the ice, but we decided instead to just go ahead and climb over the chain-link fence. Mom, who was always worried about everyone else, said, “Come on, Two-Mom, we’ll help you over. Be careful on top.” Two-Mom ignored us and just flung herself up and over the fence like it was nothing. When Mom climbed up, she got her sweat pants caught on the prongs at the top, and it took both of us a while to get her untangled and down. Of course, by then, we were on one side, locked in, staring at the balls and racquets we’d left on the other side. How can you not laugh at that?

  In later winters, we would go to St. Louis’s National Guard armory, crossing from Illinois into Missouri. Almost every day, Mom and Two-Mom would pick me up at school at 2 p.m. Getting there was hard work; depending on traffic, it would usually take us an hour and a half to drive across the bridge and to the armory.

  During my junior-tournament days, I was playing bigger and better kids my age and not winning. How did my mom keep me interested in tennis, keep me from not being bored or discouraged? She told me that I had the basics down and that, if I kept going, I would grow into my game. How did she know that? I wish she were alive today so I could ask her. I’m Irish Catholic and not the most religious guy in the world, but I still go to church every Sunday to discuss a few topics with Mom. Maybe someday I’ll get some of those answers I’m looking for. One thing I do know is that, during her years of training me, Mom had that “Fuck it” attitude toward anything that interfered with her vision for me. Maybe that’s where I got my own defiant attitude.

  So it was easy for me to play kids a few years older and tolerate losing, because I wasn’t under any pressure—yet. I wasn’t supposed to win. I would just go out there swinging away and gaining experience. Mom knew that, as my game got better, the kids my own age would become my future competition.

  “If you can’t beat kids your own age,” she’d tell me, “you can’t beat anybody.”

  So, I ask you, how was it that a woman from East St. Louis who loved playing and teaching tennis was able to come up with a style that fit a personality like mine? Well, she was a genius. Obviously, I’m prejudiced, but I listened to her instructions and understood that if I did what I was asked to do, that there would be rewards at the end. Once I had mastered the fundamentals, I could improvise—introduce different shots, different spins, and ways of directing the ball—anything that would make me a better player.

  Mom could have taught anybody. She was able to get inside the mind of anyone she was teaching and identify the right buttons to push to get maximum result. If you talked to any of her old students today, they’d tell you the same thing.

  Mom also understood what it took to keep me eager to get back out on the court. Practice was measured in quality not quantity. As a young boy, practice would last under an hour, and that remained the case pretty much throughout my career unless I was deliberately pushing myself. Sometimes I’d be on a roll, thinking I had it all figured out. I couldn’t wait to play more, but that’s exactly when Mom would walk on the court and call it a day. We quit when she decided I’d had enough. She never let me over-practice. Some of my buddies I grew up playing against, like Vitas, Guillermo Vilas, and Brian Gottfried, would be on the practice court for two or three hours, but for me it was 45 minutes. As a result, I always looked forward to my next workout.

  Mom didn’t always get it right. But as a kid, if I got annoyed at her, which was rare, I kept it to myself. When I was older and more independent, there were times when I thought she was interfering in my extracurricular life. Occasionally I would get so pissed off at her when we were practicing that I would slam down my racquet and storm off the court, yelling at her, “Get out of my life!” But that didn’t last long.

  A lot has been written about my mom being a stage mother, so let me set the record straight. Why was it OK for Joe Montana’s dad to teach his son football or Wayne Gretzky’s dad to teach him hockey but it wasn’t OK for Gloria Connors to teach her son tennis? Mom stepped right into a man’s world and a man’s game during the height of the Women’s Movement in the 1970s. Up until that point, people weren’t used to dealing with a woman in the business end of tennis; both men and women players had men as managers, and men organized and ran tournaments. Along comes this feisty little woman from East St. Louis whose son was proving to be a winner, and they had to deal with her. When Billie Jean King was in the forefront as the first woman athlete to enter the boardroom, Mom had already been doing exactly that behind the scenes, fighting the established tennis bureaucracy. Now, if I hadn’t been winning, they could have dismissed her and it wouldn’t have been a big deal. But my mom represented me. And not only represented me but was my mother, coach, and friend.

  She paid the price for treading into that traditionally male-dominated territory by having some pretty aggressive criticism thrown at her by the tennis establishment and the media. They would say she wanted my success more than I did because she had never had it herself, that she hadn’t been good enough so she tried to make her son good enough. They called her “domineering” and “Dragon Lady.” If it got to her, I never knew about it and neither did anyone else.

  3

  NOTHING WOULD EVER BE THE SAME AGAIN

  What people seemed to miss entirely was the real story: Mom, Two-Mom, and Pop taught me the basic fundamentals and technique. I am proud of that, because I think it has become a lost art. But they also had a plan for how they wanted me to play, and they instilled it in me from the very beginning. No compromise. The game they taught me was a woman’s game, but given to a man to beat men. It was both a very simple and yet complicated way to play, and no one else played it. No one.

  Before the violent attack on Mom, the concrete courts at Jones Park played a big part in my tennis education. They had these steel nets that made a cracking, twang sound when you’d hit the ball into them. Also, the steel net didn’t catch the balls; it would shoot them right back at you. So not only did you miss the shot; the net never let you forget it. I can still hear that sound today. On the tennis court at home, the bounce was uneven and the space behind both baselines was tight, so that’s where I learned to take the ball on the rise. But at Jones Park the surface was smoother and we could play longer rallies, which gave Mom a better opportunity to assess how Johnny and I were progressing.

  Mom would stand behind me, watching my every move, how I set my feet, whether I moved my body into the shot or got my racquet back soon enough, and every other little detail that helped me improve. If she saw something wrong, like I was tossing the ball too far in front of me on my serve, she would stop the session immediately and explain what the issue was—and not just when I was young—that strategy continued even after I had become the best. I always looked her square in the eye
as she spoke; anything less would have been unacceptable. Why did I look her square in the eye? Respect. I knew that she meant to help me and I wanted to make sure I absorbed what she was saying.

  My game was simple, but here are the two key ingredients. First, preparation. That was the foundation; be ready, racquet back, straight back, just like a gate swings. No excess motion. There’s a lot of wasted motion in today’s tennis, but that’s not how I was taught. I was told to turn, bring the racquet back, and use my body to drive the ball. Today it’s all arm power and swinging away with an open stance. Maybe you’ve even tried this yourself. It might be easier, but to me it’s not as effective. Mom never gave me negative criticism. She was always positive, even if what we were working on wasn’t quite where she wanted me to be. Mom would say, “Getting better, Jimmy, but it’s not quite there.

  “Move those feet. On your toes. Racquet back and time the ball.”

  OK, OK, I got it.

  “If you’ve got it, then do it again and show me,” she’d say.

  Now, here comes the second and most important part: footwork. This is what made my game what it became. This was the hard part, and believe me, I worked on it every day.

  My grandpa took great interest and pride in seeing both Johnny and me play tennis. But he knew not to get involved too much when it came to giving advice on our games. The looks Mom and Two-Mom used to throw him if he offered an opinion that wasn’t asked for were enough to shut him up. Instead, he took on the role of my physical trainer, working with me as if I were a boxer.

  He trained me like a boxer. He was tough. There was no discussion about the best way to train. His way was the only way. Jump rope, pick up your feet, and don’t miss. If you missed, you would have to start over. No margin for error.

  In my early teens Pop bought me a pair of heavy boots to run in. By then we had moved to a house at the top of a steep hill in Belleville, outside East St. Louis, and Pop had me running up that slope wearing those boots and carrying a weighted bag.

  “Lift those feet high as you run, Jimmy,” he’d say. “This is gonna do nothing but be good for you when it counts.”

  Pop was also the ultimate “Don’t give a shit” guy. I remember after I had just lost 7-6 to McEnroe in the fifth set of the semifinals of the 1980 US Open. It was a really long, grueling match, and I was exhausted. On my way back to Florida, I stopped to see Mom in Belleville. When I arrived, Pop was sitting at the kitchen table, leaning back like he always did, with his hands locked behind his head. I’m standing there, just off the plane with Patti, the baby, the nanny, and 15 suitcases.

  “Well, Jimmy, have you had time to figure out how to beat McEnroe yet?” Pop asked.

  Wait! What?! I stared blankly at Mom and Patti.

  “No, Pop, I’ve been kind of busy, but I’ll get right on that.”

  That was my Pop. No nonsense. You’re out there doing it, so do it right. From Mom, Two-Mom, and Pop’s point of view, I should never have lost. I knew my performance was a reflection on them. Mediocrity was unacceptable, and pushing my limits started at an early age.

  Although Johnny and I rarely played on the tennis courts at Jones Park after Mom’s attack, we still went there with Mom, Dad, Two-Mom, and Pop to enjoy the facilities all year long. During the summer we fished in the lake, messed around in rowboats, and swam in the pool. We’d meet up with our friends for games of softball, while all around us families would be enjoying picnics and afternoons out. Not after dark, though. When the sun went down, a different kind of crowd came out, and those guys were looking for trouble.

  I never looked for trouble, but one day when I was about 10 years old I found it. During the winter, the lake at Jones Park would freeze over so we could go ice-skating. People would build bonfires on the shore to roast hot dogs and marshmallows, and the kids who were old enough would have their jugs of Mogen David wine. One time, I was skating toward shore to get to the bonfire when I heard CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! The ice gave way a little. I knew what it was, but I was thinking, “I can make it.” Then the ice gave way a little more, but I still believed I could make it. Then, before I knew it, I was neck deep in the freezing water, looking up and thinking, “Fuck, I didn’t make it.”

  I was wearing about 30 pounds of winter clothes and starting to sink when suddenly I felt this big hand on my head. I had a buzz cut with a little tuft of hair in the front, and Pop grabbed me by that tuft and hauled me out. That was the day I decided that I wasn’t ever going to do anything that caused me great pain. Except, well, play tennis for 47 years.

  Actually, the park was responsible for teaching me another lesson. Right past the tennis courts in Jones Park was a line of lady cigar trees that had these big bean pods that Johnny and I would try and smoke. They were hard to light, but when we did take a hit, I usually ended up coughing my guts up and feeling sick. Cigarettes never stood a chance with me after that.

  Pop was behind one of the most thrilling and dangerous experiences of my childhood. Beyond the lady cigar trees were the railroad tracks, a stretch of the line used by freight trains and coal cars that passed through at about five miles an hour. This was too tempting for Pop.

  “Come on, boys,” he said one day after tennis, and that’s when we learned to ride the railcars.

  Pop taught us how to run alongside the railcar, grab the post, and jump up on the step. Getting off was harder. You had to hang from the ladder on the side of the car and time your jump to make a soft landing in the bushes. Many a time I ended up with an ass full of stickers. Just all part of the learning process.

  Once we got on the train, we saw a different way of life. The boxcars were filled with guys trying to make it from one place to another. Back then we called them hobos. So there we were, just off the courts, dressed in pristine tennis whites—although we weren’t country-club boys—and hopping into a boxcar with hobos. Can you imagine how we felt? But there was never any tension, because we were with Pop, and Pop was always “packing heat.” Watch out!

  We usually didn’t ride farther than the St. Louis rail yard, but once we stayed on as far as Kansas City, which was about 300 miles away. I had never been farther from home in my life on the train. When we got home from riding the railcars with Pop, Two-Mom would give him grief and Pop would just laugh it off. He was good at that.

  Once Johnny and I were old enough to ride the railcars on our own, it was our favorite way to travel. If Johnny had to stay after school, he would grab a train home. If we wanted to head off into the local hills, we knew a perfect spot where we could make a soft landing.

  Pop was full of fun lessons. Johnny and I would usually walk or ride our bikes to school, but sometimes we drove. It sounds crazy, but it’s true. Pop taught us to drive his police car in Jones Park when I was eight years old and Johnny was ten. Pop would sit shotgun and Johnny and I would take turns cruising along the paths. Thank God we were quick learners, because not long after we got behind the wheel, we had to take Pop to the hospital. We’d been at a swimming pool where he was teaching us some new dives. He did a speed dive from the shallow end, hit the bottom, and split his forehead open. He surfaced dizzy, disoriented, and bleeding. Johnny grabbed the keys to the police car and we managed to get Pop into the backseat, where I held a towel to his head. Johnny jumped in the driver’s seat and hit the gas. He weaved through traffic, laid on the horn, and sped to the hospital. By the time we made it, there was so much blood in the backseat you would have thought Pop had been shot.

  Driving became no big deal for us: hopping in a car without a license or adults; you’re on your own, taking full responsibility. Whenever Pop would come over we’d take his police car out around the neighborhood. We’d visit our friends, go to the store, or drive ourselves to school. Pop never minded walking over to pick it up later. Remember, this was back in the 1950s; if you did the same thing today it’d be called “breaking the law.” Occasionally, someone would see us driving past, trying to peer over the dashboard, and call the cops. When we were
pulled over, we’d simply explain to the officer that Al Thompson was our grandfather and we’d be off the hook.

  He’d say, “All right, then. Say hi to your pop and be careful going back.”

  What a time we had back then.

  Mom didn’t mind, but Dad didn’t like us driving at all. He was busy working on the bridge all day so he wouldn’t be around when we took the car, but he’d hear about it later.

  Dad was a straight-shooter. If we ever did anything wrong, which we did—a lot—we always had to stand up to it. There was one time we snuck off to the house of a guy who pissed us off for some reason and slashed his tires. When Dad found out what we had done, he made us go over the next morning before school to apologize and pay for the damage. We had no money, but Dad wasn’t interested in excuses. So how could we pay it off? Well, it was either a job or the belt, and I preferred the job. If you were out of line, you were out of line, and you had to do something about it. Never hide from your screw-ups.

  Dad might not have been as involved in my upbringing as much as Mom, but he wanted us to do well in school. Unfortunately, I was never very good at it.

  Johnny and I went to St. Phillip’s grade school, 20 blocks from where we lived. In first grade, Mom would drop me off at school, and every day she would stop by the grocery store to decide what to put on that night’s dinner table. By the time she got home, I’d be waiting on the back porch with Pepper. That didn’t sit well with her, so back in the car and back to school I went.

  School was torture for me from the very beginning. By the second grade, I’d settled down a little, mainly because the headmaster, Monsignor Forney, let Johnny and me play tennis during recess on one of the two courts he had built next to the baseball diamond. It was unusual in the 1950s for a grade school to have tennis courts—and a stroke of luck that my own school was one of them—but the monsignor loved the game, and he also got to hit with us once in a while. We loved it, too, because it got us out of school. To most of our classmates, tennis wasn’t a real sport. White socks and white shorts? Come on, get real. If you didn’t play baseball, basketball, or football, you’d better be able to run fast.