Tiriac also knew about business, because he is very shrewd and streetwise, though totally honest and generous. He’d talk to people to get the right contracts for me, at a time when I had no sponsors. He got me my contract with Dunlop for my rackets and negotiated appearance money for us in the early days. He was in advance of his time. He was one of the first people to see that tennis was about to become a business, it was going to become more than a sport, so he started to represent players and, later on, to promote tournaments. Despite his limited tennis talents, Ion became a major figure in tennis through his intelligence and foresight.
In other areas of my life, he also influenced me. As soon as we had a bit of money, he taught me to stay in the best hotels and eat in the best restaurants. I remember distinctly the first time I stayed in a good hotel. It was the Cavendish Hotel in Jermyn Street, London, opposite Tramp’s nightclub, during our Davis Cup semifinal against Great Britain in summer ’69. ‘This is the life’, I thought, ‘I wouldn’t mind more of this.’ We weren’t throwing money away, we just wanted to live a normal life, like the other good players. Tiriac was like a best friend, an older brother, a confidant, a father figure, all those things—in fact, my relationship with him was like a marriage without the sex, and I owe him a lot.
My results were steadily improving, partly because I was no longer just playing on clay but also on the faster hard courts around the world. They suited me well, because I was fast. I was starting to hit with more power, to serve-volley when required, whilst still drop-shotting and lobbing my opponents. I reached the 3rd round at Wimbledon, beating one of the top young Americans, Tom Gorman, on the way, so I was quietly working my way up, not the rankings because they still did not exist but the unofficial list of leading players.
The real advantage of winning a few matches at Wimbledon was that I now felt I had a better idea of how to play grass-court tennis by the time the Romanian team lined up next to Great Britain to play our Davis Cup semifinal on court 1, in mid-August 1969. Britain were favoured to win, simply because, in Mark Cox and Graham Stilwell, they had two experienced grass-court players. A lot depended on how Cox would play and, fortunately for us, he blew it.
He got really nervous. He collapsed against Tiriac in the first match, losing in straight sets. Afterwards, some people thought that Ion’s habit of varying the number of times he bounced the ball before serving may have distracted Cox, because he could never tell when Ion was about to serve. Who knows? Stilwell beat Tiriac in straight sets two days later, so it can’t have been that bad. My match against Stilwell did not go in my favour, and I lost it in four sets. The score was 1-1 after the first day. Everything to play for, as they say.
The next day’s doubles were crucial, and Ion and I were really on form. Whilst Tiriac created openings, I was jumping around the net like a mountain goat, sending angled volleys to all corners of the court, and we both lobbed the British pair the whole time. We were confident, and we worked well as a team, whereas our opponents Cox and Stilwell, being left-handers, were both left-court players with Stilwell having to play on the right. They did not work together well, and we beat them without too much trouble in four sets.
The final day was very tense. With a huge crowd filling every seat on court 1, the result was in doubt until the very end, because Graham Stilwell played inspired tennis to cut through Ion in straight sets. It was all down to me and Cox. I have played so many Davis Cup rubbers, and so often had to score all three points to secure a team win, that I am used to this sort of situation. This doesn’t mean that I don’t get nervous each time, because I do. But, on this occasion, I think Mark was even more nervous than me. He started well, winning the 1st set 6-3, but after that I calmed down while he got edgy, and I won the next three sets 6-1, 6-4, 6-4. We had done it.
Our captain, Gheorghe Cobzuc, ran onto court and planted a big kiss on my lips to congratulate me (I could have done without that). We had become the first Balkan country, the first Communist country, ever to reach the final of the Davis Cup. This was a huge deal for us. We knew that we would be heroes back home, and that the papers would be full of our exploits.
I now had two really big things to look forward to: firstly, I was finally going to play the US Open at Forest Hills for the first time in my life—and I was very excited about that—and, secondly, the Davis Cup final (or Challenge Round, as it was then called) would take place in Cleveland, Ohio, against the holders, the USA, in September, just five weeks later. I felt I was continuing to fulfil the promise that I had shown, I was proving to people that I could get results, and the world was really starting to notice me. I was on a steep learning curve, and I was loving every minute.
That night, I picked up a girl who admitted that shehad a dog with her, and the dog had to come too.‘OK, the dog can come,’ I said, dubiously.
I had seen enough American films to have a picture of New York in my head, but nothing I had imagined prepared me for the real thing when I crossed over Brooklyn Bridge and arrived in Manhattan. The incredible skyscrapers, the complete mix of people there, the buzz about the city. I loved it from the start and have always felt very comfortable there. So I was not overawed when I first went to the West Side Tennis Club, Forest Hills, the venue for the 1969 US Open. In fact, the club was very sedate and traditional, and not at all like today’s Flushing Meadow venue for the tournament, which is as crazy and noisy as any tournament I know.
The US Open was played on grass in those days (as was the Australian Open), but the courts at Forest Hills were very different from Wimbledon’s carpet-like lawns. For a start, the American courts had a lot of bad bounces, but they were also much softer, which meant that, when you played a drop shot, it really sank. This favoured my game and was one of the reasons that I beat Stan Smith, who was already a highly regarded player, on my way to the quarterfinals, where it took Ken Rosewall to stop my progress. The tournament was memorable, because Rod Laver completed his second Grand Slam, winning all four majors in the same year. Don Budge, before the War, is the only other player ever to have done the Grand Slam, so Laver’s achievement was unbelievable, and I am sure it will never be equalled.
Soon after, we arrived in Cleveland, Ohio, for the Davis Cup final, the Challenge Round. Why Cleveland? Because, we were told, it had the biggest community of Romanians in the USA. Sure enough, we went to a lot of parties with our expatriate comrades, other Romanians came over especially, and the Romanian ambassador even flew down from Washington for the matches. The stadium itself was next to a school, so I remember finding it difficult to practise with the noise of hundreds of children, who came round to watch the whole time.
What was even less fine was the court. It was meant to be cement, like the majority of courts in the States, but this one had been covered with a sort of shiny paint. It was so shiny, in fact, that you could barely see the ball. When it rained, which it did quite a lot, preventing practice, it became really slippery. It was also a court that was even faster than grass, and this definitely favoured the Americans.
During the tie itself, we had to put up with left-wing and anti-Vietnam demonstrators, who regularly tried to interrupt play. Although they were kept away from us as much as possible, some still managed to get through, shouting from the stands and displaying banners with slogans such as: ‘Tennis for the rich, tenements for the poor’ and ‘Long live Ho Chi Minh, Long live the Vietcong’.
The tie was much closer than the score suggested. On day one, Arthur Ashe beat me in three close sets, 6-2, 15-13, 7-5 (tie-breaks had not yet been invented). My defeat was partly as a result of the US coach, Denis Ralston, having watched me beat