Game is up for Ilie Nastase. Centre Court bad boy spews racist insults and foul-mouthed abuse at women players

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.

Source: Game is up for Ilie Nastase | Daily Mail Online