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.

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.

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

I've been kicked in the teeth more times in tennis than the law ought to allow.

I was raised by two women, and that laid the groundwork for the way I treat 'em: with the utmost respect and admiration.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

People say I'm around because I have a lot of heart, but I know all the heart in the world couldn't have helped me if I wasn't physically fit.

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.

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.

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?'

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.

There is only one number one. It is a lonely spot but it has got the best view of all.

People don't seem to understand that it's a damn war out there.

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.

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.

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

I'm not begging to be remembered or whatever. I did my thing, and if you remember, that's even better. But if you don't, there's so many other things going on.

Nothing's perfect along the way [in life], and you ride the ups and downs. It's how you come out of those and continue on that I guess really matters.

That's something a lot of athletes miss - a lot of them walk away too soon. They don't get everything out of their system. They have a lot of what-ifs when they're sitting around later in life. I don't have that. I got all that out of my system. I pushed it to the brink, I loved it, and when I walked away, I'd had enough.

The minute you think you know everything about tennis is the minute your game starts going down the tubes.

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

I was never part of the crowd.

I like any title with the letters U.S. in front of it. To me, the U.S. Open is the most important tournament in the world.

Big money encourages tanking. In my opinion, tanking is going on even with a lot of the top guys today - it's quite evident.