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Nine bad boys (and girls) of tennis — plus the man who changed the game on and off the court

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6 months ago

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Nine bad boys (and girls) of tennis — plus the man who changed the game on and off the court

Not just crisp white pleats and ‘quiet please’, tennis these days is as synonymous with its tournament rebels as it is with Wimbledon centre court

Ilie Nastase at the 1978 Roland Garros French Open. Photo: Corbis/VCG/Getty Images

Wimbledon gets underway next week (Monday 1 July), and while the gentle thwock of racket on ball is a soothing summer sound, it would all be very dull without the troublemakers, the ranters, the players who throw their toys out of the cot.

We all have our favourites — Roddick, Kyrgios, Pliskova, Sharapova — but the grandaddy of tennis bad boys is Ilie Nastase, a supremely gifted Romanian player who burst onto the pro scene in the late 1960s and provided a template for all tournament rebels to come.

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