People don't seem to understand that it's a damn war out there. Maybe my methods aren't socially acceptable to some, but it's what I have to do to survive. I don't go out there to love my enemy. I go out there to squash him.

Back in East St. Louis, tennis wasn't the real thing. If you weren't playing baseball, basketball, football, you were kind of on the outside.

Equality? They ought to play the women's final on opening day. Everybody knows who's going to be in it.

I can't say that I was my happiest on court, but I felt completely free. Free from family obligations, free from my own torment. In a real sense I was a different person. It was a place where I could not tolerate the idea of being beaten. I psyched myself up into a state where I felt something close to hatred towards my opponent, a state where I detested the idea of someone making his name at the expense of Jimmy Connors. I was in my element on court, measuring myself against someone else. I was not competitive for show. It came from deep within.

Nothing is like being out there and playing and performing and winning - nothing. But to have an interest in the player? The nerves and everything that goes with it? Seeing what he's learned and how he's done it? That's the second best thing to playing. I think.

But why should I read what somebody else thinks of my life when I know the real story?

No, like I said, my dad was never really part of the tennis. His involvement around what I did with the tennis and with my mom and my grandparents was really not a part of my life.