Jimmy's Game

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A rare photo of Mom with Two-Mom, Gloria and Bertha.

Gloria's Connors' instructional style is the nucleus of her son's story. How she taught the game pervades the core of everything that made her son succeed, from technical to emotional to mental.

Understanding her approach requires knowledge of how the game was played during the years Gloria came of age as a player. And no one cast his spell more powerfully over that era than Don Budge.

Budge struck hard, deep groundstrokes that were exceptionally forceful. His backhand is still often regarded as the best in tennis history. Not until Connors arrived in the early '70s was there a male player so able to dictate play from the baseline as proficiently as Budge had, with strokes that oppressed opponents and kept them pinned in a defensive position.

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Joel Drucker is one of the world's best known tennis writers, having written for years for Tennis and many other publications. He is a consultant and background researcher working with some of the top commentators for the Tennis Channel. Joel is also the author of the book "Jimmy Connors Saved My Life." He lives in Oakland, California and plays regularly at the Berkeley Tennis Club.

"Jimmy Connors Saved My Life"

"Jimmy Connors Saved My Life" is a unique account of the career of the legendary American champion, James Scott Connors, and how it intertwined with the life of the author in a relationship both real and imagined. The book combines the perspective of an intellectual, a devoted tennis player, a professional writer, and a student of society searching for meaning and identity in a defining period of American history, a period in which tennis became a big time, big money, and big media sport.

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