The doubles the next day was crucial. Ion and I had never yet lost a Davis Cup doubles match, but then neither had the experienced American pair Smith and Bob Lutz, so there was a lot at stake. Unfortunately for us, our opponents were too good that day. Although the match was closer than the score indicates, it was all over in straight sets, 8-6 6-1 11-9. The Americans had gone 3-0 up in rubbers and so had retained the Davis Cup. All we could do in the third day’s matches was to salvage some honour.
I was desperate to get at least one point for my country and fought as hard as I could in my match against Smith. I stretched out a two sets to love lead, but Smith was equally desperate to avenge his Forest Hills defeat, so he fought back to two sets all. The final set was long and hard. Four times I had match point, four times Smith managed to save it. Finally, he reached match point himself, and seconds later had won the set 11-9, to take the rubber. I walked off court, bitterly disappointed.
The length of my match against Smith meant that Tiriac’s match against Ashe, the last in the tie and an academic match in any case, began late in the afternoon and had to be halted when Ashe was on the verge of winning in the 4th set. The reason was that we had all been invited to meet President Nixon at the White House at ten o’clock sharp the following morning, and we absolutely had to catch our plane that evening. There would have been no question of postponing the meeting, because CeauŸescu was beginning to establish closer relations with America and I think Nixon had just been to Romania the month before. So it was politically important for us to go.
We all lined up on the lawn outside the White House, alongside the American team, and Nixon made his way along the line, shaking our hands. I remember he kept one hand in his pocket the whole time, which looked strange, as if he was hiding something in there. All the Americans were being very formal: ‘Hello, Mr President’, and all that, but when it came to Arthur’s turn he just said: ‘Hi, how are you.’ Arthur was not going to be overawed. I suspect it had something to do with Nixon being a Republican and Arthur a Democrat.
As for me, of course I was excited to meet Nixon and to go to the White House, but I was not tongue-tied. Not that there was an opportunity to say much, other than ‘hello’. I do remember that, as a souvenir, Nixon gave us each a golf ball with his face on it.
As 1969 came to a close, I returned to Bucharest to rest. I had played a record thirty-one tournaments (winning eight singles and six doubles titles), plus six rounds of Davis Cup, with each tie taking two weeks including the ten days’ practice we gave ourselves. This was a huge increase on what had gone on the two previous years, when I’d played only twenty tournaments, fewer Davis Cup ties, and won only three titles each year. That meant that in 1969 I had played more than forty weeks of tennis. I had hardly been home, and now I needed badly to reconnect with my family and friends. Home, by now, was a small apartment given to me by the army, which housed only military personnel. But it suited my needs perfectly and allowed me to come and go, at all hours of the day and night, without having to tip-toe past my parents’ bedroom.
At the start of the new decade, I set off more confident about the future after the good results of the previous year. In February 1970, I won the US Indoor Championships in Salisbury, Maryland, before moving back to Europe for my traditional southern Italian circuit of tournaments, where I won yet more titles. So I was full of anticipation when I arrived in Rome for the Italian Open at the end of April. Built by Mussolini and adorned with fascist-style marble statues of dubious taste, the Foro Italico is one of the most memorable stadiums on the circuit. It also has a great atmosphere, because the Italians are noisy supporters—they are noisy people anyway, like Romanians. As long as I was not playing one of their compatriots, or in the middle of one of my scenes, they always cheered for me.
I have never been the sort of player to predict boastfully that I am going to beat a guy. But I felt good all week, so I was not surprised to get through to the last four without too much difficulty. There, I got past the tough Yugoslav Nikki Pilic in five sets, and it was my fellow East-European Jan Kodes who awaited me in the final. Kodes went on to win at Roland Garros in Paris a few weeks later, but this time it was I who came out on top, beating him in four sets: 6-3, 1-6, 6-3, 8-6. I was exhausted but exhilarated. The Italian Open was the next biggest tournament after the four majors, so for me to win it was another confirmation that I was now among the best.
After the final, I had to go straight back on court with Tiriac to play our doubles final. He would always watch my singles matches, because he wanted to see what sort of mood I was in for the doubles, which were usually played later in the day. If I was tired, even if I’d won, he’d have to cajole me into playing: ‘Come on, do it for me, it’s important to win the doubles.’ For him, his main earnings were now coming from the doubles, so sometimes he really had to force me onto court. Once I started playing, I was usually OK. But after the singles final that year I was so exhausted and happy that we lost the 1st set of the doubles 6-0 to the Aussies Bowrey and Davidson before I had time to wake up and recover my senses. It took us five long sets finally to get the better of them, and by the end of the day I had played a total of nine sets. Importantly, though, I had won two big titles.
This called for a big celebration. Off I went with Ion to the Via Veneto, where we met up with the Italian player Nicola Pietrangeli and various friends of his. First of all, we all had dinner at one of our favourite restaurants, the nearby Taverna Flavia, run by a guy called Mimmo. He always came to see us play and would scream encouragement: ‘Come on, I give you nice food, you have to win.’
We then all moved on to the Jackie O nightclub, the only place to be seen in those Dolce Vita days in Rome. The club is still there, tucked away behind the Excelsior Hotel. Nicola got us in, because he was a member. A winner of successive French Opens in ’59 and ’60, Nicola was a giant of the game, and, at thirty-five, had just played his last Italian Open. He had an aura about him that made him a superstar in Italy—and still does. He’s like his friend, Claudia Cardinale, who I subsequently met a few times. They were both born in Tunis of Italian fathers. Nicola’s mother, though, is from Russia, and he happens to share the same birthday, the same year, as my brother, Constantin. Nicola knew everyone, and, as the years went by, we would hang out more and more together, and he would introduce me to many of the well-known friends that he seemed to accumulate around the world.
By the end of a very long night, I had, of course, found a beautiful girl to take back to my hotel. It wouldn’t have been a big celebration otherwise, would it? I had met her in the nightclub, and she said she was an actress. It wasn’t until a few days later, when she left a message for me when I was already at my next tournament, that I discovered she also had some fancy title, I think a contessa. I hadn’t yet realized that in Italy there are thousands of people with these meaningless titles. Anyway, I was curious, so I called her back and, by the following evening, she had joined me in Naples.
Picture the scene: the romantic bay of Naples, candle-lit dinners, a lot of exercise during the day, followed by more night-time action. Well, it was a bit like that, except that, however beautiful she was, and however much I liked her, I was a bit worried that this was going in a direction that I wasn’t quite ready to follow. When she mentioned that we might spend some time that summer at her parents’ estate in Tuscany, I thought briefly about saying ‘yes’. But when she let slip that her parents would also be there, I admitted: ‘I’m afraid, amore mio, that I have another tournament to go to, and I am very busy this summer, so that will be difficult.’
So on I moved, to the next town and the next girl. Actually, I did stay in touch with her on and off for about a year, but it was certainly never a proper, serious relationship. I really didn’t need one of those, to be honest. All my attention was on my tennis, and the women were just to have fun with, nothing more. I never broke any hearts, though, because I never promised anything. I never kept a girlfriend long enough for her to think that something more long-term might develop. That’s the secret, I think. Usually, it was more a question of coming up to a girl—because I liked to be the one to choose, I didn’t like it when they ran after me—and I’d ask them out to dinner, and after that it was easy. Then, other times, I’d make all that effort,