In the mid-1980s, though, Noah found himself so desperately searching for solutions to his existential malaise that he was easy prey for freeloaders and scammers.<\/p>\n
Towards the end of our hour-long chat, I ask him about an intriguing detail I had found in a review of Noah\u2019s French-language autobiography Secrets etc…, which said that he \u201callowed himself to be seduced into thinking that a woman he had never met except via telephone was the woman of his dreams\u201d.<\/p>\n
She turned out to be a con artist who succeeded in getting gifts, money and jewellery out of Noah.<\/p>\n
When I put the comment to Noah, he replies with the four poetic sentences which appear at the start of this article. Then he chuckles and says: \u201cWhitney Walton. Look her up. You gonna see I was one of the guys she seduced. You gonna read something very interesting, very funny.\u201d<\/p>\n
Conned by a mysterious seductress<\/p>\n
And he is certainly right about that. Whitney Walton turns out to have been an otherwise ordinary woman from Louisiana who created an alter ego \u2013 that of a beautiful blonde model called Miranda Grosvenor<\/a> \u2013 and inveigled herself into the lives of musicians, actors and film producers through intriguing phone calls.<\/p>\n Art Garfunkel tried to take her on holiday to Switzerland. Billy Joel sent her a Rolex studded with diamonds. And that other glamorous tennis star of the 1970s, Vitas Gerulaitis, was also among her marks. According to Bryan Burrough, a Vanity Fair reporter, Walton hacked into the celebrity mindset by avoiding \u201csex talk\u201d in favour of something \u201cflirty, gossipy, and more than a little mysterious\u201d.<\/p>\n Noah, too, would come to enjoy exploring the psyches \u2013 and vulnerabilities \u2013 of the tennis players he would go on to coach after his own retirement.<\/p>\n His first management position involved running the French Davis Cup team, which he led to a famous victory over Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi<\/a>\u2019s Americans in 1991. Now he is reprising that role as captain of the European team who will take on the Rest of the World at the forthcoming Laver Cup event at London\u2019s O2 Arena.<\/p>\n