“You understand that if it weren’t for me, the great Ilye Nestas, the tennis player, would no longer exist!” – Kostyantyn Nestase, who is now 90 years old, the older brother of “Nastya”, said proudly. interview for GSP, from 2016, now republished.

The one known to close friends as “nea Costică”, the model and later coach of his famous brother, was then 83 years old, but the vigor of 50. He had not played tennis at all since 2011, due to knee problems and “because he did not have was, I still had the motivation,” but he has Elijah stories from the One Thousand and One Nights.

At the time when Ilye was just discovering the world and was looking at his brother’s rackets with interest, Kostika was already a very good tennis player.

“Ilya was interested in rockets, he took one at a time, he was small, 4-5 years old, he could barely hold it. The problem was that when he grew up, he also loved football. Around the age of 10, he disappeared from home on weekends and went to play with players from Steaua. I kept telling him to leave football and come to tennis. Mom, how many whips, that is, beatings, I gave him to get football out of his head! I also argued with the football players to leave him alone,” Nea Kosticke recalls.

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