| Jimmy Connors won his final professional tournament in 1989, in Isreal,
six years after his last Grand Slam victory - the 1983 US Open. By then
he had won 109 tournaments in a career that had seen him ranked World
no. 1 for 268 weeks, 160 of those being consecutive. Altogether he won
eight Grand Slam championships and must have lost count of the semi
finals he reached. He was still successfully playing in the important
championships (he is pictured above at Wimbledon in 1989) and as
late as 1991 was still good enough to reach the semi-finals of the US
Open, but his best days were many years past. Considering he had won his
first professional tournament in 1972 the fact he was still a force two
decades later gives a perfect indication of just how good a tennis
player he was - and how he had been blessed with good health. |