I later learned that at the 1983 French Open junior championship, when I was playing the Australian Mark Kratzmann in the semi-finals, McCormack sat watching the match with Ion Ţiriac, discussing who would sign whom. The story goes that they made a bet that whoever won the semi-final would get signed by McCormack and Ţiriac would sign whoever lost. McCormack obviously believed my father would relent, but he never got the chance to try, because Kratzmann beat me in three sets.

So Ţiriac then turned up in Leimen. Legend has it he drove up in a Rolls-Royce – he didn’t, he came in his Mercedes, because he wasn’t looking to impress with his money. Instead he did something very smart. He befriended my mother, and particularly admired her cooking – she’s known in the family as a good cook and like all German housewives was very keen for her guests to feel well fed with well cooked food. So Ţiriac ate a lot and complimented her on her cooking, and thereby opened the door through my mother to a long discussion with both her and my father.