"Everything we want tennis to be now has its roots in Jimmy Connors" - Tennis journalist on American's role in shaping new era for the sport

Jimmy Connors has received high praise from celebrated tennis journalist Joel Drucker for his pivotal role in shaping a new era in tennis.

Tennis witnessed a transformative era in the 1970's, largely thanks to tennis legends such as Connors, Bjorn Borg and Vitas Gerulaitis, among others, on the men's side and players like Billie Jean King, Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova on the women's side.

On the latest episode of the Tennis Channel Inside-in podcast, Joel Drucker highlighted how these players significantly influenced the landscape of the tour.

"That was part of the boom, these people emerged and the game was popular and they were winning big matches. They were kind of creating what the tour looked like," he said.

He emphasized Billie Jean King's influential role in paving the way for a new era. He also drew attention to Connors' impact, asserting that the former World No. 1 embodied the characteristics of an ideal tennis player.

"Whether it was Billie Jean King in the women's tour and Connors created the idea of a tennis player is. Everything we want tennis to be now has its roots in Jimmy Connors, with his emotions, with his connection to the crowd, with his passion," he added.

Having published a biography about the American titled 'Jimmy Connors Saved My Life' in 2004, Drucker also reflected on the valuable lessons he gained from the 71-year-old.

"With Connors you saw that it was visceral, it was kind of personal. It needs to be personal. There's a story I wrote in my book about, 'Meeting someone who wouldn't play with me and I didn't like that. He was ducking me and that ticked me off and I realized that to meet him I was going to have to do something,'" he said.

"That was the first time I saw that tennis matches aren't just about hitting balls better, it's personal and I wrote that this is the first time I tasted blood on a tennis court and I liked it," he added.

A brief look at Jimmy Connors' career achievements

Jimmy Connors

Over the course of his illustrious career, Jimmy Connors won eight Grand Slam titles, five at the US Open, two at the Wimbledon Championships, and one at the Australian Open.

He also held a the World No. 1 ranking for an impressive 160 consecutive weeks and a total of 268 weeks throughout his career. Additionally, the American won the year-end championships on three occasions.

Despite having retired from professinal tennis in 1996, Connors still holds three significant Open Era men's singles records, that of most tour-level titles (109), most matches played (1,557) and the most match wins (1,274).