The game’s up for Mr Nasty
He was the Centre Court bad boy everyone adored. Now, as Ilie Nastase spews racist insults and foul-mouthed abuse at women players, even his friends fear . . .
YOU wouldn’t think it would take seven (yes, seven) enormous muscular security guards to control one long-haired 70-year-old Casanova, long past his physical peak, but still obsessed with his looks and sexual prowess.
But as Ilie Nastase ranted in the street on Saturday, floppy grey fringe falling into his eyes, bile spewing from his mouth and seemingly doing his best to destroy every last shred of his reputation, the Romanian authorities were taking no chances.
The two- time Grand Slam singles champion had, after all, been on quite a rampage at the Fed Cup Tennis tournament in the Romanian city of Constanta.
The Romanian captain called his Great Britain counterpart Anne Keothavong and British women’s No 1 Johanna Konta ‘f****** b*****s’, asked the umpire ‘what’s your f****** problem?’, shouted obscenities at the 1,700-strong crowd and caused the match to be suspended for a distressed Konta to recover her composure.
All of which culminated in the former tennis legend being forcibly ejected from the stadium, physically restrained and later suspended.
Before the match even started he’d accosted a British female journalist and called her ‘stupid, stupid’ and ‘ugly’.
And the day before he’d made a racist jibe about the colour of Serena Williams’s unborn child asking, clearly audibly in his native Romanian: ‘Let’s see what colour it has. Chocolate with milk?’ (The 23-time Grand Slam singles champion had just announced the news she and fiance Alexis Ohanian are expecting a baby.)
And at the same pre-match media conference he’d clasped Anne Keothavong close to his chest and asked not once, but twice, for her room number.
She is also pregnant and happily married and, say insiders, not the sort to welcome any kind of overture — in deeply misplaced jest or otherwise — from a leery septuagenarian harking back to his misspent youth as the original tennis stud.
For decades, Nastase, despite being nicknamed Nasty for his sharp tongue and temper, remained one of the most deeply loved (and lusted after) men in tennis.
He has bounced back from endless controversies, joked his way out of endless embarrassments and somehow got away with discussing his sexual extravagances, threesomes, endless wives and thousands of lovers, without putting many of us off.
But over the past few days, something has gone badly, worryingly, wrong for the former world No 1, and his extraordinary actions have left fellow tennis players and former friends appalled.
ANNABEL CROFT, a long-term friend and occasional tennis partner of Nastase, says: ‘ He should be hugely embarrassed. He’s taken it far too far.
‘He’s always been scandalous, unable to open his mouth without telling you how many people he’s slept with or asking for your phone number. But it was all a joke and a game and he’s like that with every single woman.’
even her? ‘I never took it seriously and I never had any problems with him,’ she says. ‘But this recent stuff . . . that’s outrageous. It should be a very big lesson to him. This is a complete other level — it’s not a game any more.’
Meanwhile, U.S. tennis Champion Pam Shriver told yesterday of how, from when she just 16, Nastase, then 32, jokingly but repeatedly asked her if she was still a virgin, and continued to do so until, at 20, she finally had the courage to ask him to stop. And Richard evans, his long-term friend and biographer, says: ‘He always lacked judgment. There is a line he crosses, but he doesn’t see the line.
‘In the heat of battle, he loses it and becomes very nasty. It happened time and time again when he was a player and the pressure got too much for him. He’ll be depressed at losing this job, but it was obviously too much for him.’ Nastase once had it all. Although the Wimbledon singles championship eluded him, he won 100 professional titles, seven grand slams, including doubles, four masters and seven championship series. He also had charm, good looks, celebrity pals including Sting, elton John, Mick Jagger and Clint eastwood, by his own account more than 2,500 notches on his bedpost and a repertoire of hilarious on-court antics.
So he’d play in the rain with an umbrella in one hand, hide under the Centre Court tarpaulin at Wimbledon, borrow policemen’s helmets and play practical jokes on his opponents while the crowds lapped it up and cheered.
But there was always a less appealing, darker side, too, that earned him the ‘Nasty’ sobriquet; screaming fits at umpires and linesmen, endless attempts to distract opponents and his astonishing rudeness to spectators — he told one noisy woman he’d ‘s*** in her hat’ if she didn’t pipe down.
And he was utterly relentless in his pursuit of sex. Which was great when he was single and devastatingly handsome and rattling through women like sweeties, often in threesomes — though to his eternal regret, never foursomes — never remembering their names, and never repeating.
HE ONCE said: ‘Making love in those days was like taking a daily shower: you take one, it feels nice, then you forget it.’
As it turned out, getting married and having children made little difference to his hit rate. ‘We had an understanding,’ he says of his first two wives. ‘I like the chase. I want to choose. The rooster should attack the chicken.’
He is now on his fourth wife — a 41- year- old Romanian model called Brigitte, whom he asked out after he her saw on television.
He’s slowed down in the sack, but still enjoys winding her up by playing Italian love ballads when she’s out and says ungallant things such as: ‘It is rare you see a woman who’s 45 or 50 who looks great and in good shape.’
Perhaps because of his impoverished childhood — he was the youngest of six children growing up under Communist rule in the Fifties when there were constant food shortages — perhaps due to his sporting genius, he was always quick to lash out.
He once chased and attacked an opponent who beat him when he was 11. Later, he’d scream at anyone and everyone — cameramen, officials, players and spectators.
And while all superstar athletes come down to earth with a bump when the crowds and the cheers finally dry up, Nastase seems to have landed more heavily than most.
He is still the most famous and adored man in Romania, but relentlessly courts publicity with silly outfits, outrageous comments and headline-grabbing actions.
He is also perhaps unhealthily obsessed with his own image.
The top floor of his Spanish-style villa in Bucharest is given over to a white, mirrored dressing room with rows of designer clothes which he chooses with great care
and, in the case of the military garb he wore to Wimbledon in 2015, maximum publicity.
But his really special place is his ‘museum room’ — a shrine to himself and his career, in which he can barely sit without weeping with nostalgia.
‘It makes me uncomfortable. I don’t like to remember. I was skinny. I had long hair. I was a tennis player . . . I mostly cry inside,’ he has said.
It’s chock- a- block with tarnished trophies, scrapbooks, photos, rackets, old pairs of special edition ‘Nastase’ Adidas trainers and, in pride of place, letters from Tony Blair, thanking him for a tennis racket; George Bush, thanking him for looking after his wife once.
HE EVEN tried for a long time to get hold of his old Madame Tussauds waxwork dummy until he was told the museum had melted it down.
He is obsessed with the room, but spending time in it makes him angry at never having been given membership of the All england Club, despite having asked for years.
Given the run- ins and adverse headlines over the years, it’s easy to see why he never was asked to join. It’s certainly never going to happen now.
Of course, half his chat is probably simply silliness, bluster and bravado. Friends cite his endless kindnesses and occasional displays of properly chivalrous behaviour.
Both Annabel Croft and Jo Durie told yesterday of having their honour defended by Nastase when male opponents behaved appallingly. As Durie says: ‘In one match, the man on our opposing team tried to hit me [with the ball]. Nastase told him in no uncertain terms that if he tried that again there would be retaliation and he wouldn’t be having any children in the future.’
Both also witnessed his very quick temper.
Those close to him view Nastase’s ridiculous flirting with Keothavong as just an extension of his old roue personality — meaningless, albeit spectacularly ill-judged, particularly in today’s society.
‘Asking for the hotel key is an old ploy he’s been pulling for decades and a silly, stupid thing to do,’ says his biographer Richard evans. ‘ This time it was totally inappropriate at totally the wrong moment with totally the wrong person — she’s pregnant, married — it’s a joke!’
evans insists that behind all showing off and explosive tempers, there’s a kind, generous, volatile and deeply complex man — but not a racist.
Nastase himself blames the furore on a ‘translation error’, which is not an explanation that will work with his ‘f****** b*****s’ insults and public outbursts. Of which he has form.
Nastase has been suspended from the Fed Cup tournament by the International Tennis Federation and is the subject of an investigation.
But yesterday, having sent an emergency bouquet to Keothavong, he still had the gall to turn up at the tournament, head straight for a VIP seat and try to brazen it out as he has done in the past.
But this time, even Nastase can’t joke and jape his way out. ‘ This one feels like it might stick,’ says evans. ‘It’s very sad.’
Or some might say, just an awfully long time coming.