Philippine Sports News and Updates

But this generation will have to embrace this image of the 64-year-old Fischer shaped before his death on Thursday in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Fischer played tennis at the Baguio Country Club and had a romance with a 30-year-old woman from Davao named Marilyn Young in Baguio City before he went on exile to Iceland.

Fischer’s certified Filipino heir, 7-year-old Jinky, was born in 2002 at the Saint Louis University Sacred Heart Hospital here.

The girl’s birth certificate bears the name “Robert James Fischer” as her father, but she kept her mother’s maiden name, “Young.”

The 6-foot-tall Fischer used to consume large servings of Filipino food and adored sinigang (a popular soup broth) when he lived here for almost two years, said Marilin Torre, wife of Filipino grandmaster Eugene Torre.

Marilin said Fischer used to consume five balut (boiled duck eggs) in one sitting every day, years before he decided to stay in Baguio.

Fischer asked Marilin to bring him 50 such eggs when she went to Yugoslavia with her husband for Fischer’s rematch with Spassky. Eugene served as Fischer’s second in the match.

Eugene, Asia’s first grandmaster who had idolized the American in his own rise to the top of Philippine chess, became Fischer’s bosom friend and was one of the few people he trusted until his death.

The man became an American icon for defeating Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky at the height of the Cold War and again in a highly publicized rematch in Yugoslavia in 1992 that forced him to renounce his American citizenship.

The American government sanctioned Fischer for playing in Yugoslavia in violation of the United Nations embargo imposed on Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic who fomented war in the Balkans.

Fischer became more notorious when he gave brazen speeches and interviews over various radio stations around the world that depicted the United States as an evil nation run by a Jewish conspiracy.

But the man who styled himself as a modern American outlaw made the American-built Baguio his home between 2000 and 2002 after he renounced his American citizenship, his Filipino friends here said on Saturday.

Baguio was the site of the world chess championship between Anatoly Karpov and Victor Korchnoi in 1978.

Fischer lived a nomadic life, pursued by what he described as a cabal of Jews that controls the world, so he only entertained a small circle of friends like Torre when he decided to stay in the Philippines, said Leonides ‘‘Des” Bautista, a close friend of another chess icon Florencio Campomanes.

But despite his reputation, Fischer kept a normal home with Marilyn Young in the city, according to Young’s friend, Marilin Torre.

A top executive of the Government Service Insurance System briefly hosted Fischer at the country club for three months in 2000.

Jimmy Tangalin, 49, a professional tennis coach at the club, supervised Fischer for a while, and found the man “kind and entertaining.”

“It was Eugene who introduced me to Fischer. I knew about [Fischer’s] celebrity status. But it was still a pleasant surprise. We just met, but he immediately opened up a conversation about Jews and the US. These conversations were awkward for me,” Tangalin said.

Fischer leased a home in the compound owned by former Baguio Councilor Elmo Nevada where the Torre family used to stay.

Elements of Fischer’s bizarre reputation cropped up from time to time, Marilin said. “When he showered, he didn’t use any shampoo. He preferred to wash with just water and soap. He brushed his teeth without toothpaste.”

Why he decided to make “a former American colony and city” his home for a while still confounds his friends.

Bautista said Campomanes had a hand in bringing Fischer to the country back in the 1970s at the height of martial law.

After that, Fischer became an occasional visitor to the Philippines.

He was a close friend of New York-based Filipino artist Isabel Diaz whom he sometimes accompanied to the country whenever she returned for a visit, Marilin related.

But he began to frequent Baguio when he became close to Torre, Bautista said.

Bautista said his first meeting with Fischer gave him some insight as to why Baguio was the American’s sanctuary.

“You don’t recognize him. He wears a hat. For the older generation, we remember him as clean-shaven so we would not recognize him if he approached you. He had a beard and was balding. But when Eugene introduced us, he was so comfortable.”

“Fischer lives in his own world,” he added, and being incognito went well with a community where people minded their own business.

Bautista said the old Baguio culture developed this habit because residents were used to Caucasians who lived in the city.

“That’s what Bobby loved about Baguio,” he said.

Fischer never lost this connection to the city. When he was arrested by the Japanese authorities in July 2004 for holding an expired US passport, he telephoned friends in Baguio.

Marilin Torre said Marilyn Young, then already based in Davao, kept in close touch with Fischer even after another friend, Miyoko Watari, publicly declared that she would marry the controversial celebrity to keep him out of Japanese prison.