For Love And Money

While Rosewall was surely the most popular man inside the All England walls, Connors was easily the most unpopular. Most of the other players dislike him because he is sometimes a smart aleck. He has declined to join the players' union (the Association of Tennis Professionals); he has declined to play Davis Cup for the current coach, Dennis Ralston; and he has declined to play the WCT circuit, preferring to compete in the tournaments run by his manager, Bill Riordan. During his tough five-set match against Aussie Phil Dent in Round Two, virtually everyone watching on TV in the players' tearoom was fervently cheering for Dent.

Connors did have a devoted coterie of rooters—Chris and her mother, the Riordans, his old tutor Pancho Segura, his mother Gloria and his pal Nastase. Riordan was shouting encouragement to Connors between points of the Kodes match on Court One when suddenly Kodes stopped and snarled at him, "Why don't you shut up!" And a reporter for The Times wrote very indignantly about a Connors "clique, led by his manager and other large, red-faced Americans, the men among them wearing big cigars in their mouths."

Mama Gloria had to be shushed by the decorum guardians at Centre Court the first time Connors played there in 1972. Last week she sat quietly during his matches and fingered rosary beads. "Jimbo made me promise to keep my mouth shut, and I did," she said after the Kodes match. "But what an effort!"

It did not boost Connors' popularity when, early in Wimbledon's second week, news came from the U.S. that his lawyers had filed a suit against two officials of the players' union and Commercial Union (sponsors of the International Grand Prix circuit) for, among other things, allegedly conspiring to keep him out of the French Open, which was the French Closed this year for anybody playing team tennis in the U.S. The union voted to raise a defense fund for the two officials, considering that the suit was against them all.

Union president Arthur Ashe, twice a Wimbledon semifinalist himself, said: "The pressure facing any young player at such a critical moment of his career is intense enough without the added burden of knowing that, when he walks out on court, he will be suing his opponent—in this case Dick Stockton."

If he felt any pressure, intense or otherwise, Connors did not show it. He lost the first set to Stockton but fought back to take the match 4-6, 6-2, 6-3, 6-4, bashing forehand and two-fisted backhand winners with the same accuracy as his fianc�e and twice the velocity.

"Playing Connors is like fighting Joe Frazier," Stockton said afterward. "The guy's always coming at you. He never lets up."

Old pro Segura, who used to tour with Rosewall and who has worked on Connors' game since the kid was 15, gave his pupil some tips on how to play the final—mostly technical things about returning service. They must have been dandy tips, or Rosewall must have been badly worn down, because during one stretch in the short match Connors broke Rosewall's service eight out of nine times, winning the first and second sets handily and moving out to a 4-2 lead in the third.

Almost before the Duke of Kent could get settled in his seat in the Royal Box, Connors was at the same place Stan Smith had been the day before—two sets up on Rosewall, leading 5-4 in the third and serving for the champagne. Rosewall saved two match points with beautiful backhands, then succumbed. Connors threw his racket high in the air and leaped over the net to shake hands.

Standing by the umpire's stand waiting for the trophy presentation, Connors thought to himself that he had been dreaming about this moment since he was six years old and "that it might be the only time in my life I win Wimbledon," and he started crying. He was more tearful than Chris had been the day before.