Finding My Own Identity

Summary

Brett Connors — son of Jimmy Connors, age 42 at recording, career broadcast producer at Tennis Channel and ESPN and now a nature and tennis photographer — joins Lisa Stone to discuss the psychological experience of growing up as the child of a famous athlete, deliberately avoiding the sport that defined his father, and eventually finding his own identity through a path that reconnected him with tennis professionally but not competitively. Brett’s story is unusual: despite traveling with Jimmy Connors during the World Team Tennis years and being fully immersed in the professional tennis world as a child, he chose golf in part as an act of identity separation. He played one year of college golf at the University of Arizona before a wrist injury ended that path. He now co-hosts a podcast with his father — their first guest was Mike Tyson, whose daughter plays tennis — and works as a photographer alongside his broadcast career. The episode is fundamentally about identity formation in athlete families and the unspoken pressure on children of elite athletes.

Guest Background

Brett Connors is the son of Jimmy Connors (eight-time Grand Slam champion, former world number one) and grew up immersed in the professional tennis world, traveling with his father during the World Team Tennis era. Despite this environment, Brett deliberately chose golf as his sport — an act of identity separation from his father’s dominant tennis legacy. He played one year of college golf at the University of Arizona before a wrist injury ended that chapter. His professional life has been spent in tennis media: he worked as a production assistant at Tennis Channel, covered Grand Slams for ESPN, returned to Tennis Channel as a tape producer and line producer, and now works as a nature and tennis photographer with a specialty in drone work. He co-hosts a podcast with Jimmy Connors; the show launched roughly two years before this recording and featured Mike Tyson as its first guest (Tyson’s daughter plays tennis, which connected the two families). Brett is now 42, married, and reflects with nuance on what it means to grow up as the child of one of sport’s most recognizable names.

Key Findings

1. Identity Separation as the Primary Developmental Drive

Brett’s choice to pursue golf rather than tennis was, by his own account, driven primarily by the desire to be Brett Connors rather than “Jimmy Connors’s son who plays tennis.” This is a window into the psychological reality of children raised in the shadow of athletic greatness: the sport associated with the famous parent can feel like an identity trap rather than an opportunity. His avoidance was not about lack of talent or exposure — he was fully immersed in professional tennis — but about the need to establish his own identity on his own terms.

2. The “Athlete Time” vs. Regular Time Phenomenon

Brett describes the disorienting experience of growing up with a father whose time operated on a professional athlete’s schedule — tournaments, travel, preparation cycles — and how that created a different childhood cadence than his peers. This temporal dislocation is a recurring theme for children of professional athletes: they experience sporting events as family events, airports as familiar environments, and the professional playing ecosystem as normal life. The transition out of that world (when a parent’s career ends) can be as disorienting as the original environment was normalizing.

3. World Team Tennis as a Family Environment

Brett traveled with Jimmy Connors during the World Team Tennis years — the format where professional players competed on teams in US cities — and describes it as one of his formative experiences in professional tennis culture. The team format, with its different social dynamic from individual tournament play, created an environment that was both more accessible and more community-oriented than Grand Slam competition. This memory positions Brett as someone who experienced early professional team tennis firsthand.

4. The Podcast as Father-Son Reconnection Through Tennis

The podcast Brett co-hosts with Jimmy Connors represents a professional reconnection with tennis on Brett’s own terms — not as a player but as a storyteller and interviewer. The choice to make Mike Tyson the first guest (whose daughter plays tennis) reflects a comfort with cross-sport narrative that is consistent with Brett’s whole career in tennis media. The podcast is a vehicle for the father-son dynamic to be explored through a public medium — which itself is an identity statement about who Brett has become independent of his father’s playing career.

5. Broadcast Career as Tennis Reconnection

Brett’s broadcast career — PA at Tennis Channel, ESPN Grand Slam coverage, tape producer and line producer at Tennis Channel — represents a path back to tennis that preserved his identity separation: he is a storyteller about tennis, not a tennis player. His photography work, including drone photography, extends this: he observes and documents the sport from outside the competitive frame. This pattern suggests that children of elite athletes who need identity separation may find professional reconnection through roles that involve observing, narrating, or producing the sport rather than competing in it.

6. The Unspoken Pressure: Not Being Named the “Failure”

Brett speaks with candor about the unspoken dynamic of growing up as Jimmy Connors’s son: the awareness that any athletic attempt would be compared not just to peers but to one of the greatest competitors in tennis history. The psychological weight of that comparison — and the relief of sidesteping it through golf — is an underreported aspect of athlete parenting. Parents who are elite former athletes carry a shadow that even the most supportive parenting cannot fully eliminate.

Actionable Advice for Families

• If your child gravitates away from your sport of expertise, recognize this as a healthy identity-formation impulse rather than rejection or ingratitude — the child is solving a real psychological problem
• Allow children of elite athlete parents to develop their own sports relationship on their terms; the detour may eventually lead back to the sport (as Brett’s did through media) without the identity cost of being defined by their parent’s legacy
• Watch for the “athlete time” dynamic in family scheduling — when a parent’s athletic career dominates the family calendar, children absorb a worldview that can be difficult to translate to non-sports contexts after the athletic career ends
• Team tennis formats (like World Team Tennis, which Brett experienced as a child) create more family-accessible competitive environments than individual Grand Slam competition — the team structure makes the experience more communal and less solitary
• When assessing whether your child has absorbed your sport’s value, look beyond competitive participation — broadcast, media, photography, and coaching careers represent genuine reconnection with tennis that may be healthier for children who needed the identity separation first

INTENNSE Relevance

• Team format legacy: Brett’s childhood experience of World Team Tennis as a family-friendly, community-oriented professional format validates INTENNSE’s design premise — team tennis creates a different spectator and participant experience than individual tournament formats; families who attended WTT remember it as an environment, not just an event
• Media and storytelling pipeline: Brett’s career path — from immersed athlete family to broadcast producer to photographer — represents the kind of tennis-adjacent media talent INTENNSE needs; professionals who understand tennis culture deeply but see it through a storytelling lens are exactly the broadcast partners and content creators the league requires
• Broadcast narrative: The father-son Connors podcast demonstrates that tennis storytelling across generations has genuine audience; INTENNSE’s player-family narratives (who influenced them, what their upbringing in tennis looked like) are broadcast content that can reach beyond the existing tennis fan base
• Identity beyond results: Brett’s story reinforces the INTENNSE player development philosophy that the athlete is a whole person; league communications and player profiles that explore identity beyond the court differentiate INTENNSE from results-only sports coverage
• Jimmy Connors’s team tennis endorsement: Brett’s positive description of the WTT years — from the inside of a family that experienced it — is the closest thing to a Jimmy Connors endorsement of professional team tennis as a format; that implicit endorsement has narrative value for INTENNSE’s positioning as a format evolution rather than a novelty

Notable Quotes

“I chose golf because I needed to be Brett, not Jimmy’s son who plays tennis. That was the whole thing.”

“Growing up with Dad, you’re living in athlete time — the tournament schedule, the travel, the preparation. That becomes your normal. And then when it’s over, you have to figure out what normal actually means.”

“When I went to Tennis Channel, I finally found the way back into tennis that felt like mine — I was telling the stories, not playing them.”

“Mike Tyson was our first guest because his daughter plays tennis. That’s how it works — tennis connects everything.”

“The team tennis years were actually some of my best memories — it felt like a real community, not just players passing through a tournament.”