On the way to the final we had beaten India in New Delhi during what must have been the monsoon season. In any case, I have never seen so much rain in my life. The tie itself lasted about six days, instead of the usual three, and they had nothing but rags to cover the courts, which of course were not much use. Then they would spend hours just mopping up.
In the final, we were again due to meet the USA, this time in Charlotte, North Carolina. Surprisingly, our opponents decided to lay a clay court for the encounter. It was an American clay court, which looks like grey-green shale and is not as slow as the continental version. But, still, it was clay. Some people thought the Americans were crazy, because this certainly gave us more of a chance. Also surprisingly, Frank Froehling, who had been out in the cold just a few months before, got picked, because he’d shown what a fighter he was and had got good results that summer. Dependable Stan Smith was the other singles player and Stan teamed up with the up-and-coming Eric Van Dillen for the doubles.
Although we knew we had a better chance than in 1969, the Americans still had a massive advantage playing at home. The Davis Cup produces results that often bear little relation to tournament play. Although we won two rubbers (Ion and I won the doubles, and I beat Froehling in the fifth match), we still lost 3-2 because Smith beat both Ion and me. Froehling justified his selection by beating Tiriac on the first day, after coming back from two sets to love down in a really long, tense five-set match spread over two days.
We were getting huge coverage in the Romanian press by this stage in our careers, and it would make out my results were the best in the world. Communist media did not like to criticize its sporting heroes, not like now in Romania where they are as bad as any Western press in building up idols and knocking them down again. Even later on, when I was doing bad things on court, the papers would write about them in a way that covered up what had gone on, so they might say I had been disqualified but never why. They tried to hide the truth from the people, even though it was never a problem for me to say what had really happened.
Sportul, our national sports daily, belonged to the Ministry for Education and Sport. It was a state paper and was always putting me on the front page, especially when it came to the all-important Davis Cup. So we were very aware of the impact this defeat would have, which is why, this time, we were more disappointed to lose than in 1969, when nothing much had been expected of us. Fortunately, the ’71 final had also been played in America, which prevented the terrible pressure on us that came from playing at home—pressure that we would experience twelve months later when we reached our third Davis Cup final, against the Americans yet again, but had to play it in Bucharest.
I don’t know if it was the dog in the bedroom incident earlier that summer or simply the fact that I was getting so used to picking up girls almost whenever I wanted. Either way, I think subconsciously I might have been getting less satisfied every time the chase was successful. I was now twenty-five and had never actually had a long-term, serious girlfriend, so it was not surprising, looking back, that things suddenly changed. And fast.
We were passing each other nervously on our wayto and from the bathroom until eventually theycalled us into the little anteroom just before wewalked out onto Centre Court.
My US Open tournament in 1971 got off to a bad start, when I was beaten in the 3rd round of the singles by the Aussie Bob ‘Nailbags’ Carmichael (so-called because he used to be a carpenter before joining the tour). In the doubles, though, I did better, and by the end of the first week Tiriac and I were through to the quarterfinals to play Bob Hewitt and Frew McMillan, one of tennis’s all-time great doubles teams. We were scheduled on the Grandstand Court, near the main stadium.
The match got under way to a half-empty gallery. Down by the courtside, however, were three spectators who were cheering and clapping for us so hard that I thought they must be Romanian. One was a teenage girl, one was, I assumed, her mother, and the third was an unbelievably beautiful young woman, with shoulder-length dark hair and huge brown eyes. I tried hard to concentrate on the match, rather than on her, but we still lost quite easily and, before I knew it, she was gone.
Later that day, I was back on court with Rosie Casals to play a mixed doubles match. I spotted the young daughter and her mother at once—they were courtside again. This time, the stands were full, and it took me a few more minutes during the warm-up, with only one eye on the ball, to pick out the young woman who was now sitting about twenty rows up at the top of the stadium. Determined not to let her out of my sight this time, I asked a friend of mine to get a note to her saying that, when the match was over, could she possibly wait because Mr Nastase would like to meet her.
As soon as the match was over (we won, by the way), I was over like a flash, in case she decided to make a run for it. She spoke French, which I barely did, and, although I spoke broken English, hers was terrible. Somehow, though, we just about managed to talk long enough for her to tell me she was called Dominique Grazia, she was twenty-one, she lived in Brussels with her French father and her Belgian mother, and she was in New York for a week’s holiday. Soon, her mother arrived with her younger daughter, Nathalie, and I asked Madame Grazia if I could possibly take Dominique out to dinner that evening. ‘No, no,’ she replied with charm and tact in perfect English, ‘it is I who would like to invite you to dinner with the three of us.’ I knew enough about manners not to insist, and later that evening we all met up at a French restaurant called l’Escargot, near their hotel off Madison Avenue.
I remember her mother doing most of the talking, while I tried to answer the questions that she fired at me. Dominique, like me, was quite shy, so she listened but did not say very much. As for Nathalie, who was fourteen, she was tongue-tied with happiness. I discovered she was such a big fan of mine that she kept detailed scrapbooks about me at home; and the reason they were in New York in the first place was because she had been promised a trip to see me play after getting good school exam results that year. Dominique had simply tagged along for the shopping and sightseeing. She admitted she had no interest in tennis at all, and none in me either. Well, at least I knew.
At the end of the evening, I asked Madame Grazia if I could take Dominique out the following evening on her own, and I must I have behaved OK during dinner because she graciously accepted. So the next night we went out for dinner, then on to the Hippopotamus discotheque, one of the best in Manhattan at the time. I remember several players were also there, including Arthur Ashe. Although I don’t like to dance—I get very self-conscious and think everyone is looking at me—I forced myself so that I could at last get a bit closer to Dominique.
She told me she had had a very strict and sheltered upbringing and had not been allowed to date boys until she turned eighteen. Then, she got engaged to the first boy she went out with—who was barely older than her—and stayed with him for two years until she had called it off the previous year. A rather different path from the one I had taken these last few years, I thought. Although we kissed, nothing more happened that night. For the rest of the week, I never once took her back to my hotel—I’m sure her mother would not have allowed it. I either had dinner with her, or the four of us would dine out or meet up at the tennis club when I was playing.
By the time they were due to leave New York, I was through to the mixed doubles semifinals and frantically trying to work out a way of seeing Dominique after the tournament, because I knew I was in love with her. I decided there was only one thing for it: I told Rosie Casals that I was going to have to pull out of our match and follow Dominique back to Brussels. Rosie, understandably, got mad at me, screaming that this was typical of me, chasing women as usual. It did no good; I changed my flights and hopped on the plane with the three of them. Madame Grazia had obviously warned her husband that there was a change of plan and that Dominique had a certain Ilie Nastase in tow with her, because he was not at all surprised to see me when he came to meet us at the airport.