One For The Ages

A 52-year-old interview with precocious pre-teen Jimmy Connors foreshadowed a life lived in tennis

- Ed McGrogan

Like all 12-year-olds, Jimmy Connors dreamed big. “My real goal in tennis,” the ambitious boy from Belleville, IL, told Dave Wohlfarth for the June 1965 issue of TENNIS Magazine, “is to play in England and to play on the Davis Cup team. I want to play for my country.”

Unlike many adolescent visions of grandeur, Connors’ became a reality. The subject of this magazine’s junior player profile in just its second issue, Connors sported a crew cut, wore a traditional V-neck sweater and had already lined his shelves with tennis trophies. When he traveled to sunny Florida for the 1964 Orange Bowl, Connors was in a different world than his hardscrabble upbringings. But it didn’t change his approach to the task at hand.