There was a big crowd—or, at least it felt big because I was not used to playing in front of so many people—and the stadium itself felt enormous as well. The only courtside ad was a small sign for Coca-Cola, in contrast to the year I won the French Open, in 1973, when the new sponsors, the Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP), put up their signs in all corners of the court. In 1966, I remember feeling very scared when I walked out onto the Court Central for the first rubber. Although I lost both my matches (and we lost the tie 4-1), I won a couple of sets in one of my singles and Tiriac and I lost the doubles only in five sets. I must have played reasonably well because I impressed both René Lacoste and Toto Brugnon, one of the other Musketeers. So much so that they encouraged me after the tie was over and said they would put in a good word for me so that I would be invited to play the French Open the following month. They were as good as their word, and, sure enough, the invitation came through shortly after. I was eternally grateful that they gave me a chance, because in those days young players relied on such acts of kindness to get them into tournaments.
One month later, I was back at Roland Garros, this time playing my first grand slam tournament. This is a huge step for any player, anyway, but for me it was an even bigger one because I had never even played a junior grand slam event. I was going into the experience totally cold. Yet, I was just one month short of my twentieth birthday. More incredibly, I did not play my first US Open until 1969, when I was already twenty-three. Compare that to today’s players, who have usually peaked by that age, and you get an idea of quite how late I started my proper career.
In those days, the Romanian Tennis Federation organized all our travel and hotels. During the two weeks of the French Open, Tiriac and I were checked into a small hotel, called Le Petit Murat, near the Porte d’Auteuil and the Bois de Boulogne, where the Stade Roland Garros is situated. Despite having to share a double bed with Ion and having to tramp down the corridor to the bathroom, I thought this hotel was great. Opposite was a restaurant, Chez André, where we would have dinner every night. The owner was a typical Frenchman with a yellow, unfiltered Gauloise permanently hanging out of the corner of his mouth. His set menu never changed: we’d have either tête de veau pressée (a sort of terrine made from veal’s head) or oeuf mayonnaise, followed by steak frites or poulet frites. And all for a few francs. Also near the hotel was a cinema, and if we weren’t playing we’d go twice a day to the movies. Tiriac and I used to love going to watch films, usually action ones because it was less important to understand all the words. We have been to cinemas all over the world, from Bombay to Philadelphia. This is one of the main ways we learnt our English, though some might argue, given my English, that I can’t have been paying too much attention to the dialogue.
I managed to pass two rounds in the singles, which was not bad, before being beaten by the South African-born Cliff Drysdale, who by then was a naturalized American. But really I was just so happy to be playing that I wasn’t all that disappointed. For the first time, I was seeing some of the great names of tennis, such as the Spaniard Manolo Santana and the Italian Nicola Pietrangeli. I also shared the same changing rooms as them, practised on adjoining courts, and ate at a nearby table. Some of them, like my hero Roy Emerson, even said ‘hello’ to me, although usually I was barely able to mumble ‘hello’ back because my English was so bad.
In the doubles, Tiriac and I began a run of victories that, against everyone’s expectations and certainly ours, brought us to the men’s doubles final. For a first grand slam tournament, I couldn’t believe it. I managed to get a call through to my parents in Romania to tell them my exciting news, but, as was typical of them, they were very low key about it all. Throughout my career, they never showed the slightest interest in what I was up to. Even at my peak, my father would sometimes casually say: ‘Someone told me you won a tournament,’ but he wouldn’t actually ask what I’d won. They never came once to watch me, even when we played our Davis Cup final in Bucharest in 1972. Occasionally, they’d see me on television but more by accident than by intention. It’s strange, I know, but they simply weren’t interested. They were pleased with what I did, of course, but they never thought of supporting me by coming to see me. I understood what they were like, though, and maybe it would have put more pressure on me if I’d had to worry about them at tournaments.
Because we were not even seeded, Tiriac and I would be scheduled on the farthest outside courts at Roland Garros. We would stand at the back door of the changing rooms, which looked out onto those courts, and we could see the matches finishing and work out when we were due on. Then we’d trot out and play in front of a handful of people. So suddenly to be in the doubles final, on Centre Court, was a big difference. Thank God I’d played the Davis Cup tie the month before, or I would probably have died of nerves. Our opponents were the American Davis Cup pair Clark Graebner and Denis Ralston, and they were too strong for us, beating us in straight sets, 6-3, 6-3, 6-0, but I was so happy to have made this big step that I didn’t care too much about the score.
Getting to the men’s doubles final called for a celebration, but our small daily allowance would not stretch to what we did next. We had a Romanian friend called Gheorghe, who lived in Paris and who had supported us throughout the tournament by buying us dinner and things. So that evening he and Tiriac decided to take me to Les Halles.
‘Come on, there’s a good bar there, we meet some nice girls, there’s a nice hotel above.’
Fine, I thought, as long as I don’t have to pay for the drinks. So off we go. Sure enough, the bar’s fine and the girls are beautiful.
‘Which one do you like?’ asks Ion.
‘Well, all of them,’ I reply, innocently.
‘No, stupid, which one do you want to sleep with? What did you think they were all doing here, going up and down the stairs like that?’
Gheorghe is falling about laughing by this time, and I’m in total shock.
‘Who’s going to pay?’ I worry.
‘It’s OK, Gheorghe has everything sorted,’ answers Ion, irritated that I was even thinking about this.
So eventually I pick out a pretty girl. She has long dark hair, typical Sixties’ make-up, with lots of black eyeliner. And up we go. I’m so nervous I can hardly swallow. She asks how I am (‘How do you think I am?’ I feel like saying), but as I don’t speak much French I barely answer back. I start to get undressed…and try not to think of what I would have done with the money if Gheorghe had just given it to me. I can tell you that the going rate here was worth about a week’s room rate at Le Petit Murat.
I’m not going to say any more about my first experience with a woman—not surprising, surely?—except to say that I was out before Ion. When he eventually padded back down, he looked at me, raised his thick eyebrows expectantly, and all I did was smile like hell and raise my thumb.
So that’s how I got laid first time. Not original, I know, but, hey, quite common in those days when nice girls did not always do as much as you would like them to. Anyway, I can think of worse ways to lose one’s virginity. Plus, as I have already said, I was so shy, I was having problems even getting physically close enough to a girl to look her in the eye. Usually, I’d look somewhere over her left shoulder. The truth is, when you have no money, your looks aren’t great, your body’s too thin and you don’t speak the local language, let’s face it, you’re not a great catch. Even I could see that. And Ion was getting to a stage of despair seeing me eye up the girls and never make a move. So I think he did us both a favour by getting that hurdle out the way in a pretty painless fashion. After that, it’s fair to say that I quickly started making up for lost time.
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