Thirty years ago, in 1973, nearly all leading male players boycotted The Championships after a dispute between the ATP and the ITF. The number one seed that year, Ilie Nastase of Romania, was one of the only top players to play at Wimbledon that year and of those who remained in contention Nastase was the most successful player by a distance.

In the summer of 1973 Nastase took the game by storm. He was to win 17 out of the 33 tournaments he played that year and had an outstanding run, which included winning the French Open and the Italian Open back-to-back for the loss of only two sets, before then winning on grass at the pre-Wimbledon tournament at Queen's Club.

At the same time, a unique political storm was brewing in world tennis. When the Yugoslav Nikki Pilic was suspended from playing by his Federation for refusing to play in a Davis Cup match, the Association of Tennis Professionals, an organisation formed the previous September, claimed that the suspension was unjust. Pilic played the Italian Open as the issue gained momentum and when he lost his appeal to the High Court in London, ATP went ahead with a boycott of Wimbledon. Seventy nine players withdrew their entries and Nastase, originally the second seed, moved into top place followed by the Czech Jan Kodes and the British left hander Roger Taylor.

"I was under a lot of pressure to play at Wimbledon,” Nastase remembers. "Mr Ceaucescu, the president of Romania, wanted me to play and personally called me, and so did the Romanian Federation. I had pressure to play and not to play. All this started after the French and the pressure was on me because I won almost everything, until Wimbledon."

Once Wimbledon began, the crowds flocked in and Nastase was soon establishing himself. But in the fourth round he came up against the American Sandy Mayer on the notorious Court No 2 - and tumbled out on the middle Saturday." I had a little problem with my back, but that's not an excuse, the guy was playing well and he beat me in four sets. Everybody plays well against the number one and maybe I was a little bit tired, I had been playing singles and doubles in every tournament, I won so many matches."

The days of heading the world rankings were a long way from Nastase's thoughts when he first started to play, inspired by a picture of the former Wimbledon champion Roy Emerson which was next to his bed."I was sleeping with that picture at night and I was trying to copy what Emmo was doing,” Nastase remembers.

"I first had a racket when I was six or seven. Then when I was 12, I had a Slazenger racket with a red grip. It was the turning point of my sports career because I was playing lots of soccer at the time. But they gave me the racket, and lots of chocolate! I was a very quick soccer player, I still watch all the soccer I can now on the satellite. By the time I was 14, I was playing around in Romania before they start sending me to some other countries to play, Hungary, Russia, Bulgaria, Greece."

The Wimbledon link was not far away. Inspired by a letter from a tour player, Dmitri Sturdza, to the Wimbledon referee, Mike Gibson, that urged Gibson to look at Nastase's prospects, Nastase played at Wimbledon for the first time in 1966. However, he won only two games in his first match against the Brazilian Thomas Koch.

Nastase says: "It was a quick visit to London for the first Wimbledon, and not a good memory to come back the next year. That was not so good either, I lost in first round again to the English guy Peter Curtis. The biggest regret I have for Wimbledon is that I didn't play the junior tournament like some of my friends did, it was a handicap for me to catch up with some
of these guys. Maybe I wouldn't have lost so early so often.

By 1969, Nastase demonstrated his growing prowess on grass when he helped to defeat the British Davis Cup team on Wimbledon's No 1 Court. And in 1972, seeded second, he had been beaten in his first final at Wimbledon by the American Stan Smith.

"My first singles final was very close, a matter of a few points, 7-5 in the fifth, what can you say? I was ready to play on Saturday but it rained. I went running in Hyde Park, I went to Speakers' Corner and saw all these crazy people. I didn't hit a ball all day, I just went to dinner in an Italian restaurant.

"When we played the final my racket broke at two sets to one and I began to use one that Adriano Panatta had lent to me. It was quite a tight racket and I was upset with it for one set before I got used to it. I went back to one of my own but the strings were very tight with that as well. I was not feeling comfortable. I was crazy in my head that I had to play with that racket. I have many pictures from the final on my wall at home. Stan Smith came to Romania to mark 30 years after we played the Davis Cup final in Bucharest. We played on the same court as in 1972. Even though I didn't win Wimbledon I played OK on grass, maybe I could have played better."

In 1976, Nastase played only two Grand Slam Championships - Wimbledon and the US Open - because he had team tennis commitment in the USA with Los Angeles. He lost the Wimbledon final to Bjorn Borg and went on to play the semi-finals in New York.

"I had a good start against Bjorn in the final and I did not think he could be that good from the baseline. I thought I could toy with him a little bit. I had beaten him on a fast court in Stockholm the year before, going to the net, drop shot, all these things, and I thought it would be much easier to play on grass. Then I was wrong - like many other guys were wrong for five years in a row at Wimbledon. Afterwards I jumped over the net and embraced him, he was almost crying. I had told everyone that he was going to be a great champion from when we played in 1974. Everyone was laughing, saying there was no way he was going to win on grass because of his game. He was under a lot of pressure and I understood why he retired early to do something else or do nothing."

For all the genius within him as a player the other side of Nastase's character remains a huge part of the overall picture. Too often he was on the edge of turbulence and outrage and there is no gauging now whether his temper actually cost him the Grand Slam titles he so hungered for. At Wimbledon in 1973, when he was a mile ahead of the rest of the field, it was
all down to a careworn player failing to come anywhere near to his potential.

"I don't regret, I had a good time,” says the man who still draws an intrigued audience when he plays in the veterans' doubles at Wimbledon and is also the president of the Romanian Tennis Federation. "I did it my way, I don't regret, not at all, a few laughs, a few results, 57 singles, 51 doubles, No 1 in the world in 1973. I would do the same again, that is my way. I did it by myself since I was a kid.

Factfile. Ilie Nastase. Born: Bucharest July 19, 1946. Resides: Paris. Height: 5ft 11 ins. Weight: 12st. 7lbs. Grand Slam singles: US Open 1972, France 1973. Grand Slam doubles: France (with Ion Tiriac 1970). Wimbledon (with Jimmy Connors 1973). US Open (with Connors 1975). Career titles: 57, runner up 38 times. Career doubles titles: 51, runner up 41 times. Career prize money: $2,076,761.