Tennis: Serving up memories from behind the Iron Curtain

Brian Woolf at yesterday's draw for the Davis Cup tie against Kuwait. Picture / Paul Estcourt

It's a case of take your pick when looking for mysterious and magical stories about New Zealand's Davis Cup history.

Lebanon, Uzbekistan, Paraguay, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Denmark. These are not exactly the normal stops on the sporting route.

The Davis Cup has taken New Zealand teams to just about every nook and cranny of the globe and brought some exotic opponents here. The arrival of the Kuwait team here this week carries on that tradition.

For sheer intrigue though, it is hard to beat the experience of the 1959 team, which went deep behind Communism's Iron Curtain when they faced Romania in Bucharest.

It was already an unusual tennis year in another way. The entire Davis Cup team which played against Ireland and Romania were schooled at Takapuna Grammar.

Lew Gerrard, among the finest players this country has produced, Mark Otway and Brian Woolf were presented to the school assembly where, Woolf remembers, they were introduced as "our Davis Cup team".

The adventure was about to begin. Dublin, compared to what they were about to experience, was standard fare. Charming, and even more so with a 5-0 victory in the European tie.

Woolf, who is on the New Zealand Tennis board, recalls Romania.

"It was about the worst place behind the Iron Curtain apart from Albania ... there were still bullet holes in the buildings."

The Communists had purged the intelligentsia and ran a rigidly controlled society. Woolf, as a young man looking for alternatives to the capitalist West, had hoped to be inspired but was instead appalled.

"It was a turning point in my life ... I had such a bitter hatred of communism because of Romania," he says.

"The ones at the top there were just as wealthy as the capitalists. The ones down below were absolutely impoverished. The West was vibrant. Everything about communism was drab and dreary."

Tennis was giving Woolf and his team-mates a rare peep behind the Iron Curtain. British journalists even wanted to accompany the New Zealand team just to look at daily life in Romania. One, Woolf remembers, did receive a visa - five hours after the plane departed on the once-a-week trip into Romania.

On the way to a stopover in Hungary, there were just 13 people on the plane. From Budapest to Bucharest the plane carried the four-man New Zealand team - including their London-based captain Dennis Coombe - and only two other passengers.

The New Zealanders stayed at one of Europe's most famous hotels, the Athenee Palace, which had been a centre of European elegance and decadence earlier in the century but was now almost deserted. There were only a couple of other guests at the 500-room hotel where a beautiful ballroom with chandeliers told the story of its past.

The team's only friends in town were at the British embassy. The isolated Brits jumped at the chance to throw a few parties and regaled their guests with mad stories of James Bond-type car chases in the mountains with not-so-secret Romanian agents. But Bucharest was no glamorous film set.

Woolf says: "The guy who looked after our rooms had a lot of stubble and we gave him our second hand razor blades. You'd have thought we'd given him the earth.

"They served us up a different brand of fish every night but I reckon they were just moving down the same fish.

"Driving through town, there was a box at every intersection with someone in it who you could see was checking on the phone every time we went through.

"It was extremely controlled ... I don't think we were intimidated but it's the only place in the world where I've looked under my bed every night."

One of the New Zealanders' opponents, Ioan Tiriac, was to become a Davis Cup legend. Over a decade later, he and the crazy-but-gifted Ilie Nastase took their country to three Davis Cup finals against the United States. Tiriac also became a famous tennis mentor to, among others, Boris Becker, and also president of his country's Olympic committee.

Gerrard beat the 20-year-old Tiriac in his first ever Davis Cup game, but the Romanians won the tie 3-2 as the grass court New Zealanders battled on the slow clay.

"They cheated incredibly on the line calls and everything like that," says Woolf, who was not required to play.

"I'm sure there wasn't an outside referee like these days, and they were desperate to win. We should have done something about it but we were stoic and accepted it.

"Some of them were so blatant, by six or eight inches. The Romanian would babble to the linesman and the guy would change his call. It was drastic.

"It was a turning point, those infernal line calls, but if we'd really been good enough we would have won."

When the young Tiriac tired in his second match against Otway, one spectator among the 5000 crowd began to chant his name, and the rest followed. It stirred Tiriac on to victory in the decider.

After a thorough search of their bags, and being told not to take photos by a stewardess, the Kiwi team arrived back in the West after a tie which turned out to be the starting point for New Zealand's yearly participation in the Davis Cup.

"I will never forget these things. It was such a marvellous experience," said the 68-year-old Woolf, who went into the furniture business before retiring 11 years ago.

"It's great to look back and I feel so lucky to have played in those times. I've still got friends I meet from overseas. And there were a lot of real characters around ...

"PR has squeezed the life out of everything now. You know what sports guys are going to say before they even take the microphone. Thanks to the sponsors, etc, etc.

"But it's marvellous having Kuwait here and talking to other people from around the world is such a plus. The state of the world ... why doesn't everyone get on with life instead of fighting."

As for the old Takapuna school connection ...

Gerrard and Woolf, who played many hours of tennis at school, have not been in contact for more than 20 years. Gerrard still lives in the United States, where he became a highly respected coach.

"I've heard he's in pretty reasonable shape," says Woolf, who is not keen on making a trip to the States.

Otway, about seven years older than Woolf, lives on Australia's Gold Coast and telephoned his old Davis Cup mate in Auckland a few weeks ago. It is a good 15 years since they have seen each other, but Woolf plans to put that right soon.