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JIMMY CONNORS
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Jimmy Connors: Detailed profile and career highlights


Jimmy Connors is part of an elite club of 6 male players that have won more than 900 matches. Tennishead profiles his extraordinary career

 

Jimmy Connors

Date of birth: 2 September 1952

Years played: 1969-1996

Matches won: 1,274

Matches lost: 283

Win percentage: 81.8

Singles titles won: 109

Grand Slam singles titles won: 8

Weeks as world No 1: 268

Career prize money: $8,641,040

 

Jimmy Connors traces his openly combative approach back to his childhood days when he was coached by his mother, Gloria. “Mom didn’t take it easy on me,” Connors wrote in his autobiography, The Outsider. “She’d hit that ball right down my throat. ‘See,’ she’d say. ‘If your own mother can do that, imagine what others will do to you’.”

Over the course of a career that lasted 27 years Connors won more matches and more titles than any other man in the Open era. In an age when many players peaked by their mid-twenties, the left-hander was still going strong late into his thirties. At 39 he reached the semi-finals of the US Open after a series of memorable victories. He held the records for the most appearances in Grand Slam semi-finals (31) and quarter-finals (41) until they were broken by Roger Federer.

Connors took the ball early and hit his ground strokes flat and with great power. His double-handed backhand in particular was a hugely effective weapon. He won his first title in Florida in 1972 and his last in Tel Aviv in 1989. In his most prolific year in 1974 he won 15 titles and played 99 matches, winning 95 of them. He won the Australian Open, Wimbledon and the US Open that year but was denied entry to the French Open because he had signed up to play in World Team Tennis.


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Tim Farthing, Tennishead Editorial Director & Owner, has been a huge tennis fan his whole life. He's a tennis journalist and entrepreneur as well as playing tennis to a national standard. He also helps manage his local club and volunteers for his local tennis organisation. He's a specialist in content about the administration of professional tennis and tennis coaching for all levels.