USA: TENNIS: Jimmy Connors speaks of life after hip surgery and his role as Roddick's coach

Veteran tennis star Jimmy Connors has returned from hip replacement surgery and is again playing tennis, golfing -- and looking forward to his job as Andy Roddick's coach at the U.S. Open starting on August 28. Connors' surgery has breathed new life into him and he is looking forward to being back on court mentoring and guiding Roddick. "For me to help him with his game and to get him back to winning the U.S. Open, I can't be sitting around. I gotta be active and be a part of really what he's doing and the way he is working out on the court and if I wouldn't have had a hip replacement, I couldn't have done that," said Connors. The eight-times grand slam winner believes a dose of confidence is all Roddick needs to climb back to the top of the world rankings. The 53-year-old Connors agreed last month to begin coaching Roddick, the former world number one who has been hoping to return to the form that led him to the 2003 U.S. Open title. "It's interesting for me to sit back and to want somebody else to win that badly like I feel towards Andy. I can bring him into my world, the way he plays and to give him a few things; I can't go to his world, with his power and his strength and everything. To be able to give him a little bit of what I was good at would be a good thing," he said referring to his time on the court as a professional. Connors, the fiery five-times winner of the U.S. Open, is looking forward to returning to the hustle and bustle of New York and experiencing the Open as a coach. However, he is not too excited about the introduction of instant replay to judge a close point at the tournament this year. "I know the fans enjoy that because they can turn around and look and the ball bounce and everything. But on the other hand, you'd miss so much other activity with the (John) McEnroe or a Connors or a (Ilie) Nastase or a (Vitas) Gerulaitis and things like that really helped make the game what it was in the seventies and early eighties, which made the people that came in that liked tennis, they became not just tennis players and tennis people but fans of sport which really shot tennis to the heights back then," said Connors while joking about his antics on court. Connors was one of the dominant forces of the game from the mid-1970s through the early-1980s. His semi-final run at the 1991 U.S. Open at the age of 39 remains one of the sport's defining moments. The tennis legend made a few predictions about who to watch out for in this year's Open. "Certainly right now I'd like to say right now Andy Roddick. And if he gets his confidence and he is going in that direction and with the kind of game that he has, he is certainly at the top of his list. But you also have to look at a Roger Federer who has really dominated the sport the last three or four years with his results. Rafael Nadal and the way he's played this year and he's the French Open champion and the finals at Wimbledon. But there are also some dark horses that are going to creep in, they always do at the U.S. Open," he said.

ITN Source | August 17, 2006

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