I first saw Jimmy Connors when we were on a school trip to a grass court tournament in Manchester. Our 'gang' had only gone on the outing to get out of doing a Science or Maths lesson, and if we hadn't been thrown out of the members bar and then the beer tent, I might never have set eyes on the gritty, grunting grinder and still believed a tennis racket as a badly designed weapon and tennis a game for posh wimps.

From that day forth Jimmy was my favourite player, especially as his thumping groundstrokes were accompanied by what might now be called a 'serious attitude problem', as well as subtle manipulation of any on-court situation and opponent (and media!).
He also had a good sense of humour, which he cleverly adapted to the sensibilities of the country he was playing in at the time.
Some years later, when watching him play at the French Open, a thumping first serve from his opponent hit him in a delicate place between his legs. Jimmy milked the moment by faking some manly pain. Then an American, sitting in the cheap seats at the top of the stadium, cried out,
'Is it still there, Jimmy?'
Connors pulled his shorts away from his waist and peeped inside.
'Yeah, it's still there,' he answered. 'But it's kind of all messed up'.

When they were still a partnership, Roddick looked pitifully bored by constantly being asked the same Jimmy Connors questions, in thoroughly boring interviews with the same preemptive questions (like 'How much was Jmmy your hero?'). But there time together had some poetic inevitability, because, because the Connors and Roddick forehands in many ways represent the evolution of a power forehand.
By contrast, the Roddick backhand, although not exactly a relic of the past, is perhaps too much like the Connors backhand to match up with the radical, thunderous technique on Andy's forehand: the grip is best suited to slice and flat shots.
But I haven't finished the section on the backhand yet, so for the rest you'll have to wait... .

In the smaller image, you can see Roddick's forehand in perpetual motion.
Unlike Andy, Jimmy takes a compact, straight take-back of the racket, and swings at the ball to hit a flat, lifted forehand with little or no topspin.
Unlike Jimmy, Andy uses a huge, circular loop to power up the racket head, and he literally throws the racket head at the ball, to generate power harnessed by topspin.
The strokes of Connors and Roddick represent two points of reference in the evolution of a forehand, from the swinging rackets of the flat hitting Connors/Evert era (The Swinging Seventies?), to the ferocious throwing of the racket head practiced by Roddick and other modern players (The Underarm Throw is a concept explained fully in Part 1: see above).

Jimmy Connors and Andy Roddick: The Return of Serve

Although the agents, marketing and PR men were no doubt very excited about the pairing-off of two all-American tennis legends, I was never sure the Connors-Roddick show was going to work where it matters most. Jimmy's answers to Sue Barker's questions last year, on the BBC's coverage of Wimbledon, about his plans for getting the best out of Roddick's game, which, technically, couldn't be more different than Connors' own playing style, were vague to say the least. I think it was Billy Jean King who stated that it could never be claimed Jimmy Connors didn't get the best out of the gifts he'd been born with. Whether he can could ever have got the best out of the far more gifted Roddick is doubtful.

The one area of the groundstroke game where Connors eclipsed Roddick was the return of serve. In a way, the huge loop that has made Roddick's forehand a force (even though it seems to have been scaled down), also made his return of serve less than it could be. Connors flat, straight and very economic take-back of the racket was easily adapted to power serves. No mind-boggling variety here: Jimmy hit the same stroke for every serve, but for faster ones he shortened the backswing and deflected the power of the oncoming serve back across the net.
The bigger the serve, the less he did with it, which is far easier if you're hitting flat.
Roddick's loop, on the other hand, has struggled against pace in the past because his natural stroke is too big to employ against a power server: he simply isn't given the time he needs to crank it up.

Some years ago, when Roddick was up against Sampras at the US Open, I read something by Nick Bollettieri in which he wrote that he was backing Roddick's return in the battle against Sampras' serve. This was a strange statement from one who knew Agassi so well: if Andre couldn't get the better of the Pete Sampras serve, nobody else was going to.
It turned out a no-contest in favour of the server.

In the larger of the two animations, you get a clear idea of the simplicity of Jimmy Connors forehand technique (I'll be looking at his backhand more fully in Part 2, The Backhand), and how easily his straight take-back and swing technique can be adapted to different speeds of serve. Connors was also exceptional at playing off balance. Again, this was made easier by the simplicity of his 'back-and-through' technique, because it's far easier to time a flat, sawn-off stroke when you're lunging over-and-in to the line of the serve, than it is attempting a whopping great loop, which is probably why in recent years Andy appears to have worked hard on a more compact return.

Compare the smaller animation, in which Roddick is returning a serve with his full-blown forehand loop. But in this animation he's facing a second serve, on a slower surface, and therefore has more time to crank up the shot. To effectively adapt to the power serves, Roddick has only three possible options: either he,
1, speeds through his loop in good time to make a perfect contact, which, against the big servers, simply isn't possible (unless you are The Hulk). Or he,
2, trims down his loop to the needs of each serve, or,
3, develop a return of FIRST serve on FAST courts as a separate stroke.
With Roddick's natural talent and Jimmy Connors as his coach, the third option might not be such a bad idea. s

This is an edited selection from Part 1 of the tennisforall digital tennis book.

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