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.

I like any title with the letters U.S. in front of it. To me, the U.S. Open is the most important tournament in the world.

I never lost a tennis match, I just ran out of time

Tennis was never work for me, tennis was fun. And the tougher the battle and the longer the match, the more fun I had.

From where we lived, to practise in St Louis was an hour-and-a-half drive each way, so that took a lot of the time. So really, our lives just took different paths.

New Yorkers love it when you spill your guts out there. Spill your guts at Wimbledon and they make you stop and clean it up.

That's something a lot of athletes miss - a lot of them walk away too soon. They don't get everything out of their system. They have a lot of what-ifs when they're sitting around later in life. I don't have that. I got all that out of my system. I pushed it to the brink, I loved it, and when I walked away, I'd had enough.