At that time, I was never in the category of those paid large appearance fees, but Ion, by 1967, did manage to get some tournaments to pay us small amounts to turn up and play. Otherwise, the only payment I received was from my Federation, who gave me a weekly allowance to cover my expenses and my hotel accommodation. They would also pay for flights and for me to play in the Davis Cup. They insisted that Tiriac and I practised for a week before the actual week of the tie, so every Davis Cup tie took up two weeks of our schedule. The various ties added up to ten to fourteen weeks a year, because we usually reached the later rounds of the competition. Tiriac and I took the view that this was a small price to pay for total freedom to travel the rest of the time. Later on, when we both turned pro, our Federation’s only requirement in terms of prize money was that we played the Davis Cup for free. We were allowed to keep all the rest of our income—a huge favour for a Communist country to grant to two of its sportsmen.
The following year, 1968, brought earth-shattering changes, not just to various parts of Europe but also to the world of tennis. Czechoslovakia tried to distance itself from the Soviet Union that spring, and all of us who came from Communist countries watched developments carefully. Nicolae CeauŸescu, who had become president of the State Council in Romania the year before, was determined to pursue an anti-Soviet policy from the start, so he resisted the USSR’s pressure to support them militarily, which of course made him very popular in the West.
Tennis, meanwhile, had increasingly developed two parallel worlds, the amateur and the professional. Great players such as Laver, Rosewall and Emerson had established their reputation on the former tour and then turned pro to improve their bank balance. Finally, in 1968, those who ran the game, including people such as Herman David, the Chairman of the All England Club, decided that this crazy situation had gone on long enough and they announced that some previously amateur tournaments would be open to all. This allowed us to play each other in some tournaments at least and to measure, truly, who were the best players in the world. It was another couple of years, however, before the distinction between amateur and professional players finally ended.
The first open major, the French Open, was in May ’68. At the same time, there was chaos in the streets of Paris, and the whole country ground to a halt as it fell victim to a general strike and to student and workers’ demonstrations. Public transport no longer worked, airports were closed, and in Paris the streets were piled high with litter bags, because the dustmen were on strike as well. The tournament organizers were determined that the French Open should still go ahead, so they were forced to lay on coaches to come and get us in Belgium. As a result, the crowds that year were huge, probably because people were not at work, and the atmosphere was like that of a happy siege, if such a thing can exist. It was made all the better because players were at long last reunited with those who had turned pro some years before, so for many it was like finding long-lost friends. I loved the way so many of them played—Laver, Rosewall, Gonzales—but my favourite was still Emerson. He served and volleyed on every point, and he was also having fun and still winning. I used to think, why aren’t I winning, because I’m joking as well?
One evening, Tiriac and I had gone to a bar near our hotel. Because it was close to the Bois de Boulogne, an area used a lot by prostitutes, most of the girls in there were actually on the game (by then, I had worked out why they were continually going up and down the stairs). We got talking to one who told us her life story, and, by the end of the evening, I felt so guilty about not paying for her services that I emptied my pockets, gave her the money I had on me, and gave her the tracksuit top I was wearing. Tiriac thought I was completely crazy, but she had a kid at home, she was a young girl, and business was obviously not good in those troubled times, so I figured maybe this could allow her to buy some food for her baby. Maybe I was naïve and she just went and spent all the money on herself, but that’s what I’m like. I’m very trusting and a bit of a soft touch, which, of course, has sometimes counted against me.
That year, Tiriac and I reached the semifinal of the men’s doubles at Roland Garros, where we were beaten in four sets by the legendary Laver and Emerson. So, on the whole, we were pleased with our first tournament with the pros, even though I had lost in the 2nd round of the singles to the Australian Dick Crealy.
We got ready to move on to Lugano, full of hope for the summer months ahead. That night, however, I started to feel a sharp pain in one side of my lower back, and by the morning I was writhing and moaning in agony. As I was still sharing a bed with Tiriac, he eventually got fed up and began to kick and shove me to stay quiet, because he thought, in his semi-comatose state of sleep, that I was having some bad dreams. It was only when I woke him up completely with my screams that he realized something was seriously wrong. He immediately called a doctor, who told me I had developed a kidney stone and confirmed that, until it passed, I would continue to be in agony. Great. He gave me some strong painkillers, which helped. The stone obviously dislodged itself later that day into another part of my kidney, and I was able to breathe again. Still shaken from the ordeal and worried about the doctor’s prediction that my problem would return and probably need an operation at some stage, I set off with Ion for Switzerland.
For the first few days, I seemed OK, but then, the night before my quarterfinal against the Indian Mukerjea, the pain started again. It felt as if I had a knife in me. Kidney stones are known to give pain that is excruciating and, apparently, worse than many women experience in childbirth. I was barely conscious, such was the agony. If Ion had not been there, I honestly don’t know what I would have done. It was clear that I needed to be repatriated to Romania very quickly. Ion had to stay behind because he was still in the tournament (which he went on to win), so he arranged for a doctor to come at once while he set to work organizing my journey back. The only way—and to this day I don’t know how I managed—was for me to take a train to Zurich, fly from Zurich to Budapest, wait six hours, change planes, and finally fly on to Bucharest, arriving at midnight. I thought I was going to die. I do remember, though, that the doctor had given me a massive painkilling injection before I left Lugano and that I was swallowing painkillers during the whole of the journey as if they were M&Ms.
As soon as I arrived home, I was admitted to a military hospital and operated on at once. But although I felt relief no longer to be doubled up in pain, I was soon very depressed to realize that I was going to be out of action for weeks, if not months. I spent a month recovering in hospital from what, in those days, was quite a complicated and serious operation. I lost so much weight in the three months I was off that, at 65 kg, I really looked like a skeleton by the time I re-emerged fully on the circuit late that autumn. In the meantime, I had missed the whole of the summer, including Wimbledon and the US Open—which I had still not played—and was worried that I would find it difficult to get back to the level I had reached.
To cheer myself up while I was convalescing and practising, I started driving around Bucharest in my new car, a green Fiat 125 that I had bought the year before in Germany (cheaper than buying it in Italy). I was so proud of it that I used to drive around town whenever I could, even though for the first year or so I did not actually have my licence. Well, I figured the best way to learn was to practise. Of course, one day I got caught, so I went straight to pass my test and get a licence.
The year 1969 was another breakthrough one for me. After my traditional visit to India, where I won three tournaments, I headed to the USA for my first trip to the other side of the pond. My first stop was Philadelphia, where Ed and Marilyn Fernberger had run a big tournament for years, at the Spectrum Stadium. They had this huge ten-bedroom house where they put up a lot of the players, like Newcombe, Roche and all the Australians—plus me. Marilyn had told me to take a cab from the airport to her house. That was fine, but what she didn’t know was that I had no money and I was arriving at one in the morning. The house itself turned out to be miles from the airport, so the cab fare was really expensive, something like $7. So here we were, the cab driver and I, crawling around the neighbourhood looking for this house in the middle of the night. On his wing mirror, the cab driver had this huge light that faced sideways and that allowed him to look at the door numbers, like a sort