Jimmy Connors - His biggest wins

[jhar26]

Some key matches of his career are missing, but you can't post what you can't find. In some cases they were out there but either the quality was very poor or they were of the part 1, part 2, part 3, and so on variety and I don't want to post twenty links for one match in my original post and make it dwarf everything else.

Wimbledon Final 1974 vs Ken Rosewall (highlights)
[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coqMjf7ROHs[/video]

US Open Final 1974 vs Ken Rosewall (highlights)
[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh76_gnh5sA[/video]
[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7jkeZ0kNq8[/video]

US Open Final 1976 vs Bjorn Borg (first set incomplete)
[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyS7k3VSrEc[/video]

US Open Final 1978 vs Bjorn Borg
[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BggFeHQTEU[/video]

Wimbledon Final 1982 vs John McEnroe
[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HF6qJI0Cgs[/video]
[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRhxdPe45bM[/video]

US Open Final 1982 vs Ivan Lendl (poor-ish quality)
[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I3BfP6KN2c[/video]

US Open 4th round 1991 vs Aaron Krickstein (poor-ish quality)
[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pixoSeX3WIs[/video]

 

[shawnbm]

Love seeing the old battles between Connors and Borg. Even by today's standards, those two could really play. Note the aggressive attacking nature of Jimmy on anything short. Note how quickly both Connors and Borg played compared to many guys today. They got up to the line and were ready to go. Lots of winners and forced errors; they were two of the very best and it shows on the clips from New York in 1976 and 1978.

 

[Kieran]

Yeah, Jimmy and Bjorn brought the best out of each other. Their 1981 semi at Wimbo was a classic. I think Jimmy's best performance against Bjorn was the 1978 US Open final. He wiped the floor with BB just a few months after Borg thrashed him at Wimbledon. It was to be Jimmy's last win against Bjorn, I think.

But his most exciting matches were with Mac and Lendl. Those were torturous to watch, like watching a brawl outside a messy pub. I'm surprised nobody ever hit anyone. They were the most bad-tempered, scandalous and addictive rivalries in tennis, just because they were so volcanic that there was much more than tennis going on there...

 

[jhar26]

Yeah, Jimmy and Bjorn brought the best out of each other. Their 1981 semi at Wimbo was a classic. I think Jimmy's best performance against Bjorn was the 1978 US Open final. He wiped the floor with BB just a few months after Borg thrashed him at Wimbledon. It was to be Jimmy's last win against Bjorn, I think.

But his most exciting matches were with Mac and Lendl. Those were torturous to watch, like watching a brawl outside a messy pub. I'm surprised nobody ever hit anyone. They were the most bad-tempered, scandalous and addictive rivalries in tennis, just because they were so volcanic that there was much more than tennis going on there...

The 1981 Wimbledon semi was a real heartbreaker for me. He wiped the floor with Borg for two sets but lost in five. That one must have hurt. But great as his rivalry with Borg was, I preferred the ones he had with McEnroe and Lendl as well. It was impossible to have a grudge match with Borg because the guy just didn't care. As Jimbo himself said, "I used all my best material on him, but nothing seemed to work."

 

[britbox]

Another Connors match I remember well was against Mikael Pernfors at Wimbledon, mid-1980s. Jimmy was down 1-6 1-6 1-4 to Pernfors but rallied to come back and win. Maybe not a career highlight but a great match to watch.