Connors wasn’t able to beat his mother in a set of tennis until he was 15 years old. He remembers the landmark moment vividly, including that he was so emotionally torn by the result that he ran tearfully to the net and apologized. That was unnecessary, since his beaming mother responded by saying, “This is the moment I’ve been waiting for. Now I know you’re ready to move on.”
The mother-son relationship remained strong throughout Gloria Connors’s life, which ended in 2008. After Jimmy moved to Los Angeles in 1968, she’d periodically stay with him, coaching tennis and waiting tables at Nibblers Restaurant to help pay the rent.
When she served as his business manager in later years, they often were in phone contact as much as 10 times a day.
