Jimmy Connors is a working-man's hero, a people's champion who tore the cover off the country-club gentility of his sport. A renegade from the wrong side of the tracks, he broke the rules with a radically aggressive style of play and bad-boy antics. Yet his enduring dedication to his craft kept him among the top ten best players in the world for sixteen years straight--five of those years at number one. Presiding over an era that saw tennis attract a new breed of passionate fans, from cops to tycoons, Connors transformed the game forever with his two-handed backhand, his two-fisted lifestyle, and his epic rivalries.

The complete, uncensored story of his life and career, The Outsider is a grand slam of a memoir written by a man once again at the top of his game--as feisty, unvarnished, and defiant as ever.

Jimmy Connors is a working-man's hero, a people's champion who could tear the cover off a tennis ball, just as he tore the cover of country-club gentility off his sport. A renegade from the wrong side of the St. Louis tracks, Connors broke the rules with a radically aggressive style of play and bad boy antics that turned his matches into entertaining prizefights. In 1974 alone, he won 95 out of 99 matches, all of them while wearing the same white shorts he washed in the sink of his hotel bathrooms. In The Outsider, Connors tells the complete, uncensored story of his life and career, setting the record straight about his formidable mother, Gloria; his very public romances; and his famous opponents. Connors reveals how his issues with obsessive-compulsive disorder, dyslexia, gambling, and women at various times threatened to derail his career. The Outsider is a grand slam of a memoir written by a man once again at the top of his game, as feisty, unvarnished, and defiant as ever.

Jimmy Connors took the tennis world by storm like no player in the history of the game. A shaggy-haired working-class kid from the wrong side of the tracks, he was prepared to battle for every point, to shout and scream until he was heard, and he didn't care whom he upset in doing so. He was brash, he was a brat. He was a crowd-pleaser, a revolutionary. And he won more tournaments - an astonishing 109 - than any other man in history, including eight Grand Slam singles titles. Only now is Connors ready to set the record straight on what really happened on and off the court. The rivalry with John McEnroe, that frequently threatened to turn violent, with Bjorn Borg, and Ivan Lendl. His romance with Chris Evert, which made them the sweethearts of the sport. The escapades with his partner in crime, Ilie Nastase. The deep roots of the fierce determination that made him the best player on the planet. This is no genteel memoir of a pillar of the tennis establishment. Unflinching, hard-hitting, humorous and passionate, this is the story of a legend - the one and only Jimmy Connors.