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‘I paid for it’: tennis bad boy Ilie Năstase revisits confrontational career

Fifty years on, a documentary premiering on Friday revisits the Romanian player’s stroppy ascent to international stardom

The film’s title is Nasty, the nickname that quickly attached itself to Năstase, whose on-court antics, petulant complaints and confrontations with umpires were barely thinkable in what had previously been a staid and well-behaved sport dominated by amateurism. One of the paradoxes of Năstase is that, off the court, he appeared to be highly popular among his fellow professionals, with enthusiastic endorsements in the film from figures including Billie Jean King, Björn Borg and Jimmy Connors. Năstase’s mercurial nature has also led him into some darker episodes – principally a clash with Serena Williams in 2017 after he was overheard off mic apparently referring to her unborn child’s skin colour as “chocolate with milk”.

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