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Posted: 2017-04-24 01:44:14

Updated April 24, 2017 15:58:03

As someone who claims to have slept with anywhere from 800 to 2,500 women, it should have come as no surprise when Ilie 'Nasty' Nastase asked for the room number of British Fed Cup captain Anne Keothavong.

The Romanian sex symbol from the 1970s and 80s is probably more synonymous with the word sleazy these days and his outbursts during and before the tie between Romania and Great Britain are far from out of character.

He is known just about as much for his ego and womanising as he is for his tennis.

Ilie Nastase the tennis player

  • Top ranking: 1 (1973-74)
  • Major singles titles: 2 ('72 US, '73 French)
  • Major doubles titles: 3 ('70 French, '73 Wimbledon, '75 US)
  • Major mixed titles: 2 ('70 and '72 Wimbledon)
  • Major singles finalist: 3 ('71 French, '72 Wimbledon, '76 Wimbledon)

It is perhaps unfair considering he won the 1972 US Open and the French Open in 1973, reaching two Wimbledon finals (1972, 1976) and finishing as French Open runner-up in 1971.

Because of his exceptional skill, he is thought to have not won as many titles as he could have, had he been more stable.

Off the court, more has come out about Nastase's activities since he retired and the media landscape changed, but the sleaze was always there as Pam Shriver revealed in the wake of his most recent incident.

The former world number three told BBC this week Nastase would regularly ask her if she was a virgin when she first came on the tour as a teenager.

"Whenever I saw him at any tournament he would ask me the same question," she told BBC Radio.

"This man has not been respectful of women for a long, long time."

Case in point, Nastase once thought a serve by Australian star John Newcombe was long during a doubles match, but the linesman disagreed.

Nastase asked the chair umpire if he had the guts to overrule the man on the line.

"Can you overrule your wife? Doesn't look like it, huh?" he lamely joked.

'Call me Mr Nastase'

During his playing days he appeared to toe the line between bad guy and entertaining character.

He was actually the first world number one when the ATP introduced its rankings system, which came just months after he had defied a player strike to compete at Wimbledon in 1973.

The previous year's finalist was eventually fined $5,000 by the ATP and is still not a member of the All England Club as a result, which he sees as an injustice.

"You have to win Wimbledon to become a member, but there are sometimes exceptions. They made other finalists members but not me. I played in 1973 and then I was shafted by the All England Club," he told the Independent in 2003.

"I might get a chance one day if I see one of those old guys at Wimbledon and push him down the stairs. Then there might be room for me."

At the 1977 edition of Wimbledon, perhaps frustrated with his inability to win tennis' most prized trophy, the Romanian flared up at officials in consecutive matches.

First he held up a fourth-round clash with Andrew Pattison for 10 minutes while waiting for the match referee. Then, in the quarter-finals against Bjorn Borg the umpire dared to refer to him as "Nastase" when he refused to get ready to return a serve.

"Don't call me Nastase. You call me Mr Nastase," he told umpire Jeremy Shales.

"I'm reporting you to the referee. You call me Mister."

A bigger brat than McEnroe

Perhaps the best illustration of Nastase's volatility is the fact that he once outdid John McEnroe.

Coming to the end of his career, Nastase had a match-up with the up-and-coming super brat who, although he was not yet at the peak of his playing powers, was the superior player.

As a result, Nastase turned the match into "the circus of all circus'", according to McEnroe.

"Nasty was going to do absolutely everything he could to get under my skin and make it not a tennis match," he said.

"It was just going to be some crazed event."

Flicking off the let-chord judge's hat, refusing to leave his seat when the chair umpire called time, constant complaints, it truly was a debacle.

Eventually, after repeated warnings, point penalties, game penalties and code violations, veteran umpire Frank Hammond had to award the match to McEnroe while the American was leading the fourth set 3-1.

The crowd had hoped for an old-versus-new showdown between two of the game's most enigmatic characters and almost rioted when they did not get what they wanted.

Beer cans and other projectiles were hurled from the stands and the police were called onto the court.

Eventually the match referee took the extraordinary step of overruling and replacing the umpire himself.

A 19-year-old McEnroe eventually won the match in four sets anyway and went on to score his first major singles title.

Nastase once tried to draw a distinction between his on-court antics and those of someone like McEnroe.

"I did it, usually, with a smile on my face," he said.

But no-one was smiling on the weekend as his sexism and temper got the best of him and brought the Fed Cup to a halt.

One wonders if he has kept on grinning after he was suspended from all events by the ITF, the same organisation that made him a hall of famer in 1991.

Topics: tennis, sport, romania

First posted April 24, 2017 11:44:14

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