Edition: U.S. / Global

ON TENNIS; With Nothing to Lose, A Moment to Live For

Published: September 3, 1991

He was not going to lose, not now, not this far into his birthday, having so appropriately fallen on the day America's workers had the chance to sit home and watch the all-time champion of blue collar tennis. High above the Stadium Court, Arthur Ashe, who as much as anyone must have known this, began talking about 1978, a United States Open final between Jimmy Connors and Bjorn Borg.

"Were you here for that one?" Ashe asked, during a changeover late in the fifth set. "He was unbelievable that day. He was flying. He just took Borg apart." Ashe knew the scores, 6-4, 6-2, 6-2. "If you're talking about Connors's performances here, to me, that was first."

He paused for a moment, running through a mental file to make sure he was not forgetting any others. Then he nodded confidently. "This," he said, "is second."

Ashe, himself a champion here in 1968, looked through the glass of the press box, at a crowd seized with delirium, and at Connors parading around his half of the court after another mad rush to the net had put him into a fifth-set tie breaker against a 24-year-old, Aaron Krickstein. The match was well into its fifth hour and the court was all shadow now, so it was easy to see that Connors, the Night Stalker of the Open, was exactly where he wanted to be.

"This is what I live for, to win a match 7-6 in the fifth," he would say before going off to find a doctor to examine his battered bones and a trainer to administer the mother of all rubdowns.

And that is how we come to this place, to 39-year-old Jimmy Connors in the quarterfinals of an Open he has simply taken over. Of all the explanations and the analyses that were heard last night and printed this morning, Connors's was the simplist and indisputably the best. He lives for those fifth-set tie-breaker moments, and who else would make that claim?

The kids play this game for the rankings, the money, the endorsements. They play the match to get it over with, so the computer can record the victory and the bank can accept the deposit. They play with the burden of millions on their backs, and they do it for the most part without passion, joy or understanding of their work.

John McEnroe, to cite a player closer to Connors's age, chases his own legend around the world, doomed to run a distant second. But Connors has few of the kids' concerns and none of McEnroe's historical angst. He said, "This is still my job," but it is one he holds not out of necessity but of choice. Here is that rare athlete who had the champion's run, experienced mortality and somehow has been granted a second, less-pressured life he can live with.

"I'm in a beautiful position, finally, after 22 years," he said last night at a news conference during which he wouldn't sit down for fear of making a "sudden move in the wrong direction." In other words, everything hurt. "I can play against all of these kids the way they played against me all those years."

He meant without fear of losing, none whatsoever. A couple of hours before Connors made that claim, in the quiet of the tunnel behind the stands, Krickstein had acknowledged as much. He said he might have been more aggressive with his forehand. He knew he should have tried more passing shots when it was obvious Connors wasn't going to miss that sky hook that passes for an overhead smash.

At his news conference, Krickstein had difficulty holding his head up, which was too bad because he'd battled a painful blister and Connors to the end. He held out his right hand to show the wound, just under his pinky finger, that opened at 4-2 and deuce in the fifth set.

He fought hard to hold his serve and had Connors down 5-2 in the fifth. Still, Connors wasn't going away. "Normally, you're out there in that situation and you're not thinking about who you're playing," Krickstein said. "With Jimmy, yeah, it was different. He's going for broke on every shot."

What did Connors, his champion's ego long since dead, have to lose? Connors hit 48 more winners than Krickstein. He came to the net 107 more times. By the end of the fifth set, right before the tie breaker, his shots had all the sting, and there was just no way he was going to lose, not with those 20,000 people he said "sounded like 60,000."

"A dollar Krickstein wins the tie break," Arthur Ashe said in the press box.

He was being contrary, just for sake of a bet. He knew better. Three points into the tie breaker, Connors hammered a volley cross-court for a winner. Krickstein's shoulders sagged. Arthur Ashe said, "Got change for a hundred?"

Photos: Aaron Krickstein held a lead of 2 sets to 1 at one stage.; Jimmy Connors stretching for backhand rturn during early portion of marathon match yesterday. (Photographs by Barton Silverman/The New York Times)