On clay, Ilie Năstase had no peer. The 27-year-old showman from Bucharest had won the 1973 French Open without dropping a set. In Rome, he disposed of Manuel Orantes–the next-best player in the Grand Prix points race–by the imperious score of 6-1, 6-1, 6-1. By September, he had already picked up eight clay-court titles; his only loss was a nailbiter to Adriano Panatta in Bournemouth.
Enough of the circuit was played on clay that Năstase‘s results made him the clear leader in the season-long Grand Prix. Heading into Chicago’s Tam International at the end of September, he had 408 points. The rest of the top six clustered between 284 (Orantes) and 233 (Jimmy Connors).
On less familiar surfaces, the Romanian was vulnerable. He lost to Sandy Mayer at Wimbledon and Andrew Pattison at the US Open. On cement at the Pacific Southwest in Los Angeles, he fell in the semi-final to Tom Okker. Now Năstase needed to contend with the fast, indoor hard courts in Chicago.
It was a surface where anybody could beat anybody. For Năstase, the threat arrived on September 27th, in the form of 23-year-old Australian Phil Dent. Dent was a promising player with many of the usual attributes of his countrymen, like a penchant for grass courts and a knack for doubles. His serve got him into plenty of tiebreaks, but it hadn’t delivered any significant winning streaks.
Though Năstase liked to clown around in the early going, he quickly learned he was in for a fight. American tennis officials had taken some of the fun out of his hijinks, too. At the Cincinnati tournament in August, Ilie spent much of the final protesting line calls, cursing the referee, and stalling in protest. When he won–Orantes, again, was the victim–the referee withheld his prize money. A USLTA disciplinary committee eventually ruled that he would be fined $4,500–half of his earnings in Cinci.
Not so long ago, the charismatic Romanian had been held up as a savior for professional tennis, a TV-friendly face and personality who could drive interest in the game. But with the rise of Stan Smith, and now Connors and Björn Borg, he wasn’t quite so indispensable. There were no shortcuts to sporting fame and fortune: He needed to keep winning.
In fairness, he never stopped doing that. He came into the Dent match with an astonishing total of 94 victories in 1973 alone.
He somehow made it 95. Dent took a close first set, 6-4. Năstase equalized by the same score. It was the highest-quality match of the tournament, perhaps the best Ilie had played on a hard court since he dueled with Connors back in March. Both men served big, returned well, and took care of the business at the net. The crowd, according to the Chicago Tribune, was left “gasping.”
The final set was the most dramatic of all. Neither man edge ahead, and the contest came down to a deciding tiebreak, the 8th of Năstase’s career. Dent couldn’t muster any more heroics, giving the Romanian the breaker and the match, 7-4. The top seed survived the scare, and the tournament kept its drawing card.
The 1973 campaign had brought Ilie down a peg, but only one. Dent, like Mayer and Pattison before him, had shown that the charismatic cad could be beaten–on a fast court, at least. Any more would-be challengers needed to hurry. However things ended in Chicago, Năstase’s next stop was Barcelona, where he would return to his beloved clay.
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This post is part of my series about the 1973 season, Battles, Boycotts, and Breakouts. Keep up with the project by checking the TennisAbstract.com front page, which shows an up-to-date Table of Contents after I post each installment.
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