WE HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR...BECAUSE ALL OF THE COMMERCIALS TELL ME SO.
The Match...Second set to McEnroe 6-1
John McEnroe leaps to a 2-0 lead in the second set against a hapless Jimmy Connors on this sunny day at the 1984 Wimbledon Championships. Connors gets to 15-30 in the second game and this is the first time in the match that he has had a lead on the McEnroe service game. It was short lived needless to say. On the very next point John rips a serve at Connors that Bud Collins says...”McEnroe’s serve is just devastating, it practically tore through that steel racquet of Jimmy Connors”. This is the first and only mention of the Connors bucket of bolts equipment at 36.22 in the video...”the old style racquet that he has been using since 1967”, he continues. At this point in the match McEnroe has won 16 or 27 approaches to the net...Connors 4 of 10.
Jack Nicklaus, the man from GOLF (Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden), is hawking for Manville. Manville is a company converting “products from the earth and forest, products that make your house a home”. It’s a nice way of saying that stripping the earth is quite alright as long as you and I are warm and cozy in our abodes. Let’s face it...we have raped Mother Earth. That is what a good consumer does...takes without giving back. Like a selfish lover. TRW is next in the advertising parade and they have come up with one of the more imaginative schticks. The background images begin with the first cave etchings of the primitive creative man and they progress until it is all modern stuff...gizmos, gadgets and futuristic stuff. You know...trips to the moon and back. You get the picture. You see...as TRW puts it...”you have to draw the line somewhere then cross over it, that is how new ideas come, how new worlds open up, charting new worlds, tomorrow is taking shape”. OK TRW...I get your drift. Moving boundaries and blurring the original meanings...wait a minute, isn’t that how wars are started too? The theme is one of a new world...as in New World Order?
Meanwhile...McEnroe continues to bludgeon Connors. He pounds his serve at him and past him...ditto on his return of serves. At 38.58 Dick Enberg reports that McEnroe’s play has been brilliant during the tournament but the London Times reported “he was a gentleman on the court” too, “no ill behavior, he has been really well mannered”. Bud Collins chimes in with, “a lot of people have been upset that he hasn’t been upset”...as McEnroe slashes an overhead smash past Connors. Smash time! You see people are really screwed up...the London Times, what a rag, gives careful scrutiny to the behavior of McEnroe. Always quick to blow up the flaw of the brash Yank. People are not even happy with a well behaved McEnroe. No...they want him to roll over and let them scratch his belly. Not going to happen.
Connors fights off two break points to get to deuce when Connors puts Johnny in real trouble with a solid backhand approach volley to the McEnroe backhand but McEnroe lunges and deftly lifts the ball over the approaching Connors for an impossible lob winner from a desperate position. Another deuce and McEnroe gets a ball off of the net cord for the point...the story of the match. Everything is going Johnny's way. All of the breaks. McEnroe breaks for 3-0. Connors has been broken four times in his five service games.
Volkswagen enters the fray for the consumer dollar...their spot claims that a brand spanking new Rabbit sells for 6,995 dollars. Not a bad deal...even in 1984.
Dick Enberg is feeling rather generous to the Bad One and he says “if you are going to author a book on how to play 1984 tennis, the last 38 minutes would be a good start featuring John McEnroe. He has authored an almost perfect display of tennis”. McEnroe proceeds to belt a serve that doesn’t come up off of the grass and Connors whiffs. You don’t see Connors whiffing very often. But Enberg seems to have drawn a line of demarcation here...1984 tennis and the tennis of the past. I will bet you he either knew what he was talking about...or he didn’t.
Bud Collins recognizes the desperate position that Connors is being backed into and he says that Jimmy is “waiting, waiting, waiting...for McEnroe to cool”. As a great champion Connors is now reduced to a prayer that the game will come back to him where he will have a snowball's chance in Hades. But McEnroe never does “cool” as he is on fire and he serves another ace for a 4-0. lead in the second set. Connors has won a grand total of seven points off of the McEnroe serve in seven games. This performance from the best service returner of all time...some will say. McEnroe has won 45 points to Connors 23. Connors finally holds for 4-1 to McEnroe. He averts a bagel.
ON TV...it's the new answer to cable television. Fed up with cable TV? Already? It's only been so many years. It's only 1984. The television in the advertisement detonates. Blown to smithereens. A television being sacrificed on national television. Like a twin tower. What if we all blew up our televisions...or rather our plasma screens? Where would we be? Twiddling our thumbs trying to figure out what to do with our time? With ourselves? Yonex is next to take a swing for the almighty consumer dollar. Martina Navratilova for Yonex midsize graphite racquets...she won the “Grand Slam” of ’83 and ’84. The four titles consecutively...just not in the same year. Chris Evert was soon in the process of converting to the midsize Wilson Pro Staff as well. It wasn’t a choice any longer. It was a matter of survival for a professional tennis player at this point...an existential moment if you will.
At 49.46 in the video McEnroe slips after he volleys and falls on his ass to the grass as he follows his serve to the net...but he quickly recovers his footing, gets up and wins the point anticipating the Connors crosscourt played perhaps just a bit too nonchalantly. Bud Collins calls it a “musical chairs point, McEnroe sits down but says I better get up and win the game”. Edberg spews, “this has been a truly remarkable, total performance by John Patrick McEnroe”. That’s right Dick...not to mention the one that took place in the announcers booth that day.
Collins says that McEnroe has “spinach fingers, just so loose and limp and yet so much strength” when he is commenting on John’s volleys. In 1982 these two players played in the longest final to date which was 4 hours and 16 minutes in duration. Forty-five minutes have elapsed in this match so far as McEnroe goes up for a 5-1 lead in the second set. The court is playing “fast and slick” according to Collins. McEnroe is winning 80% of points when he gets his first serve in...Connors 51%.
At 54.25 we are blessed with a shot of Mrs. Jimmy Connors...the former Patti Maguire. She was a former 1977 Playboy Centerfold too, speaking of formers. There is some terrific classic eye candy. What a beautiful woman...still looking good. I was in the locker room before Connors played McEnroe at the 1984 US Open and Jimmy kept saying to the big black guy that was his body guard...”where’s Patti?”. That's just one of the problems of being in love with the ultra beautiful woman...you always have to know where they are. There's always going to be some other guy trying to pry her loose from your hold. The funny thing is though...eventually they loose their looks too. Bud Collins comments she is feeling her husband’s anguish...watching McEnroe drill yet another return into the turf at Connors feet.
Collins comments that McEnroe “has Connors nose in the dirt trying to dig out service returns” as he follows his serve to the net...Enberg follows up with, “Connors has his chin on the grass”. McEnroe easily wins the second set with yet another let cord off of the Connors serve. 6-1, 6-1. Wham...Bam.
Next...Thank you m'am.
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