PHP memcache connect
===

I have a page where few thousands of users can hit a method at the same time . I do have following code where I connect every time . Since this will go to a seperate memcache server will this cause slowdowns is there a way to connect just once and reuse that connection ? Do I have to close connection after every request ? 

    $primary_connected = $memcache_primary->connect($primary_memcache_server, 11211);
    if($primary_connected){
            $data = $memcache_primary->get($key);
            if ($data != NULL) {
                return data;
            }
     }
    else{
    /////Get data from database 
    }