Connors

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Jimmy Connors


Legions of Wimbledon fans may find it hard to credit in the man who once defined bad behaviour on the tennis court, but Jimmy Connors says he ‘turned on the charm’ the first time he chatted up Chris Evert.

It was June 1972 and they were having lunch in the small dining room of the Queen’s Club during the tournament that is the traditional warm-up to Wimbledon. Evert was just 17 and shadowed by her eagle-eyed mother, Colette, but Connors, two years older and never lacking in bravado, went and sat beside her.
Later that week, he took her out on the town for their first date. After dinner they went to the Playboy Club, where Connors’ eyes weren’t on the beautiful women at the bar or the blackjack tables but on Evert, he reveals in a tell-all memoir published in the U.S..

The golden couple of tennis were both repeatedly unfaithful to one another according to the memoirs

‘That night, we ran around London acting like kids in high school — which, by the way, she still was,’ he writes in The Outsider. They parted with a kiss — Connors says he ‘played the gentleman’ — but their public courtship was soon making headlines around the world.
The ‘fairytale romance’ captured the public imagination, especially after they both won singles titles at Wimbledon in 1974. Of course, for many people, the fairytale they had in mind was Beauty And The Beast. Evert was America’s soft-spoken sweetheart, the prettiest girl on the court and the best behaved, battling every point with lady-like determination. Connors was the bully of the baseline, yelling and screaming at umpires and players.

 

While it lasted, their match energised tennis and drew thousands to a sport hitherto seen as elitist.
When, as tradition dictates, the men’s and women’s singles victors partnered up for the opening dance at the 1974 post-championship Wimbledon Ball, the band played The Girl That I Marry for a couple who were already engaged.
Although Evert was only 19, a wedding was set for November — but then abruptly called off. The reason why remained a mystery until now, with the publication of Connors’ memoirs.
He claims they were repeatedly unfaithful to each other, and strongly hints — without actually stating it — that his fiancée became pregnant by him and had an abortion against his wishes shortly before they were due to get married.

Jimmy Connors and Chris Evert were engaged to be married when it was unexpectedly called off

‘An issue had arisen as a result of youthful passion and a decision had to be made as a couple,’ he writes. 
But Connors, who was already feeling that Evert was getting everything her way in their long-distance relationship as they both continued to compete on the tennis circuit, says he soon found out the decision wasn’t to be made ‘as a couple’.
He was staying in an apartment in Los Angeles with bosom buddy and fellow tennis bad boy Ilie Nastase when ‘Chrissie called to say she was coming out to LA to take care of that “issue”’, he says.
‘I was perfectly happy to let nature take its course and accept responsibility for what was to come.
But Evert, who was raised in a staunchly Catholic family and wore a crucifix around her throat on court, had “already made up her mind that the timing was bad and too much was riding on her future”.’
She asked him to ‘handle the details’, to which he responded, with apparent bitterness: ‘Well, thanks for letting me know. Since I don’t have any say in the matter, then I guess I’m just here to help.’ 
Although he wasn’t so upset that he put off going out that evening, Connors makes clear it led directly to their relationship ending. When he rang Evert later that night to say he thought they were too young to get married, she didn’t hesitate.
According to Connors, she told him: ‘OK, if that’s what you think. I’ve got a match tomorrow. Not a problem.’
Connors admits Evert recalls it rather differently, insisting they decided to break up over a six-hour conversation. ‘I was sad,’ he confides. ‘I loved her and we both put a lot of effort into our relationship.’ But it kept going back to the same old question: ‘Can two number ones exist in the same family?’
Obviously not, he concluded.
Evert, who won 18 Grand Slam titles (Connors won eight) including three Wimbledons, later said that their marriage would have been disastrous. They were too young, too inexperienced and, most importantly, too alike. 
‘There were a lot of sparks there, believe me, but compatibility, you know… you kill each other,’ she said a decade later. 
And as her father and coach, Jim, so romantically put it at the time, there were ‘lucrative financial opportunities’ that got in the way of their settling down together.
But there was never any mention of a pregnancy. Any doubts that this is what Connors was referring to were swiftly removed last week when, thrust back into the international spotlight, Evert quickly hit back with a statement that was short but damning. Her ex-fiance had written ‘about a time in our relationship that was very personal and emotionally painful’, she said.

Tennis couple: Connors, who won five U.S. Open Titles, and Evert, who won six, captured the nation's hearts when they dated in the seventies, especially after they both won the Wimbledon singles in 1974

‘I am extremely disappointed that he used the book to misrepresent a private matter that took place 40 years ago, and made it public without my knowledge.’
Apart from later tweeting to fans: ‘Thank you guys for your support this week; means a lot to me…’, Evert has had nothing more to say.
Connors has made no apologies.  ‘That was a part of my life, and a very big part of my life at the time,’ he said this week. ‘It was not laboured on, and it was said as a matter of fact.’
Evert’s few words were entirely in keeping with a star whose love of talking about tennis — she is a commentator for U.S. TV channel ESPN for the four Grand Slam championships — is matched only by her reluctance to discuss her disastrous love life.
After three famously ill-fated marriages, Evert now buries herself in her life as a mother-of-three and part-owner of a tennis academy in southern Florida, from where she originally hails.
‘The last thing Chris really wants to talk about nowadays is this sort of thing, but she felt very angry that Jimmy did this without even warning her,’ said a friend. ‘But Chris will readily admit that she’s made mistakes in the past.’
Few would disagree that it was unchivalrous of Connors (a man who once called an umpire ‘an abortion’) to unilaterally reveal so intimate a detail.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2326453/Abortion-affairs-tennis-great-Chris-Evert-man-eater-Jimmy-Connors-cad-deserved-other.html#ixzz2Tm4oaT70