James Scott Connors was born on the 2nd September 1952, in East St. Louis, Illinois USA. He is best known for being a retired professional tennis player, who won eight Grand Slam titles, and was ranked the world No. 1 tennis player, so we can say for him that he is generally considered to be one of the greatest tennis players of all time. His career was active from 1972 to 1996.
Have you ever wondered how rich is Jimmy Connors as of early 2016? Sources estimate that Jimmy’s net worth is over $12 million, with the main source of his wealth being his career as a professional tennis player. Additional to this, when he retired he started working as a coach of widely-known tennis players, which has also added a lot to his net worth. Another source of his wealth is coming from selling his autobiographical book.
Jimmy Connors Net Worth $12 Million
Jimmy Connors was raised by his parents, James Connors Sr., and Gloria Connors, who was a professional tennis player. He began playing tennis when he was very young, thanks to his mother, who taught and trained him. When he was 16 years old, he moved to Southern California to start training with Pancho Segura. After graduation from high school, Connors became a student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Side by side with education, he continued playing tennis, and his first victory came at the Pacific Southwest Open in Los Angeles, when he defeated Roy Emerson. With this win his net worth started increasing quickly. After studying for only a year, Connors won the title at the NCAA singles in 1972, and the Jacksonville Open, so he quit education to pursue his professional tennis career.
At the beginning of Jimmy Connors’ professional career, he refused to become a member of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), and instead chose to compete at smaller and independent tournaments, organized by Bill Riordan, who was his manager at that time. Anyway, he eventually joined the ATP and immediately began to show his dominance on tennis courts. His first major win was in five sets against the legendary Arthur Ashe in the finals of the US Pro-Singles.
From 1974 until 1984, Connors won eight Grand Slam titles, including five U.S Opens in 1974, 1976, 1978, 1982, and 1983, two Wimbledon titles in 1974 and 1982, and one Australian Open title in 1974. His net worth was certainly rising. The year 1974 was his best, winning all three Grand Slam championships he participated in, as he was denied participation in the French open, as a result of his connection with WTT, World Team Tennis.
To speak further of the success he had in 1974, he played 99 matches and recorded 95 wins, which increased his net worth to a large degree. After the 1985 season, his career began to decline, however he managed to stay in the top 20 tennis players until his retirement. He held the record of 160 consecutive weeks from the 29th July 1974 to the 22nd August 1977, as the No. 1 ranked tennis player on the ATP list. Thanks to his accomplishments in tennis, Jimmy Connors has been inducted into the Inter-Collegiate Tennis Association Hall of Fame (1986), and the International Tennis Hall of Fame(1998), and onto the St. Louis Walk of Fame.
His retirement came in 1996, and in a career that lasted for over 20 years, Jimmy won 109 titles, which is the best result even now. A decade after retirement, Jimmy started a successful coaching career; beginning with Andy Roddick, who was under his mentorship from 2006 until 2008, after which Jimmy switched to women tennis, coaching Maria Sharapova, from 2008 until 2013, and most recently he became the coach of promising young star Eugene Bouchard.
Additional to his career as a professional tennis player, Jimmy Connors has written his autobiography entitled “The Outsider: A Memoir”, which was published in 2013. The book has won the British Sports Book Award in the Best Autobiography/Biography category. Selling of the book has contributed a lot to the overall size of his wealth.
Regarding his personal life, when Jimmy Connors was young, he was addicted to gambling and had an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Before he married, Connors was engaged twice, firstly to tennis star Chris Evert in the early 1970s, and secondly to Marjorie Wallase, a former Miss World, in 1977. Soon after they broke up, he married Patti McGuire, a Playboy model, in 1979, with whom he has two children. Their residence is currently in Santa Barbara, California.
