Jimmy Connors Comments on the Modern Game of Tennis

Written by: Bob Larson Tennis on 24th August 2013

Jimmy Connors Comments on the Modern Game of Tennis

epa01108278 Tennis legend Jimmy Connors watches Andy Roddick of the US play Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic during their fourth round match on the eighth day of the 2007 US Open tennis tournament in Flushing Meadows, New York, USA, 03 September 2007. EPA/ANDREW GOMBERT |

Connors Comments On The Modern Tennis Game

Jimmy Connors has his criticisms about the modern game even after rubbing shoulder with the current stars of tennis at the ATP’s New York celebration of 40 years of the rankings.

The opinionated 60-year-old who spent less than a month this summer as coach of injured women’s diva Maria Sharapova characterized modern tennis to the New York Times as “a flat-out power game, with the emphasis too much on just one stroke, the serve.”

“The variety and the imagination and what guys like Sampras and Nastase and Mac and Gerulaitis and Laver and Gonzales brought to the game is mostly gone,” said the often-grumpy American. “Not that today’s players aren’t great — they are. But outside of the top few, it just seems to be so much one way.”

Connors could not help himself in dredging up his tennis past of three decades ago. “In my day, the crowds would come and see Mac hit a tough volley or Nastase hit a topspin lob, then they could go out and play that afternoon and hit one like that and say, ‘I saw McEnroe do that, and I can do that, too.’

“That would just grab the people more into the game itself — the excitement of not only watching the tennis but also playing it. It’s very difficult for a regular guy to go hit a 150 mph serve without having his shoulder end up in St. Louis.”

Topics: Gonzales, Jimmy Connors, Laver, Maria Sharapova, Tennis