State of Indian Tennis: A failing junior system

“You’ll be surprised to know,” Balachandran said, “that even in rural towns, there are children interested in the sport, and parents interested in allowing their child to pursue tennis.”

Yet, in recent times, India’s junior tennis cupboard increasingly appears bare, the interest drawer getting locked along the way.

Indians celebrated this year’s boys Wimbledon triumph of Samir Banerjee, an American of Indian origin, as one of their own, but that was as close—or as far—an Indian connection to the prestigious junior championship. There was no boy or girl from the country competing in any of the singles junior Grand Slams held this year; the last Indian to do so was Dev Javia through a wildcard entry into the 2020 French Open.

This, from a nation that has given the world junior Grand Slam champions in singles, from Ramanathan Krishnan to Ramesh Krishnan to Leander Paes to Yuki Bhambri, who became the junior world No. 1. Currently, the highest-ranked Indian boy in the ITF junior rankings sits at 97 and the highest-ranked girl at 104.

A false sense of achievement

“The way world tennis has moved, both men and women, we haven’t really caught up,” Balachandran, who has coached many of India’s top pros including the last singles player to enter the top-100 rankings, Prajnesh Gunneswaran, said. “Unless the young talent is being nurtured, trained and developed, it’s impossible for them to make up the gap.”

Most of India’s promising junior players compete in the federation’s national junior circuit and in Asian grade tournaments at the ITF junior level, where the levels, to begin with, are several notches below similar age-group circuits in Europe or the US. Moreover, the ITF junior rankings add 25% of the doubles points to a player’s singles tally to arrive at the final position. So, an Indian junior might be No. 1 in the country or in the top-100 of the ITF rankings, but “it gives you a distorted view of how good you are”.

“Because you have not played a single European or seen competition that is actually world class,” Balachandran, an ITF Level 3 coach, said. “Parents, and to a large extent coaches of these kids, also like to claim these rankings. But it’s actually a dead end. A top U-14 kid in, say, Germany, is competing with the rest of the best in Europe. Here, if you’re an U-14 kid, you have four other boys who will be good and they only play among themselves.”

Bhambri termed it as a false sense of security at that level. Quick to realise it, he continued to put in the hard yards in building his game even as he reached the peak as a junior in 2009 by winning the Australian Open and reaching the No. 1 spot.

“It’s something that I have noticed in the last few years after seeing a lot of the juniors,” Bhambri said. “With the way coaching works in India, not a whole lot of people are knowledgeable enough to help a player push through that barrier and work on their game even while they are winning.

“A lot of the times you don’t see those kids improve. They are found out when they reach the senior level. That’s something I guess I did a good job with. Sometimes in India, with not having the right structure and knowledge, we see a lot of the kids left behind. And it’s where a majority of them fade away.”

No one to guide them

Javia has played the ITF junior circuit from the age of 15, but only within Asia. Reaching his highest junior ranking of 54 in January 2020, the left-handed player made the cut for the boys’ singles main draw at the Australian Open, where he lost in the first round to Italian Luca Nardi. He got the same result at the junior Roland Garros event against France’s Antoine Ghibaudo.

Now 19 and taking his initial steps in the pro circuit, Javia rued the lack of proper guidance at the junior level, someone who could show him the way and, at times, the mirror too.

“It was just very random,” he said. “The last phase of my junior career stopped because of Covid, but even before that, I was playing random tournaments. What I missed was proper tournament planning, right training and developmental process, which is still a big issue among Indian junior players. There’s no guidance on which tournaments to play when, where to peak, etc. The overall development phase needs improvement at the junior level.”

The transition from the junior to senior level, therefore, gets too jarring for a majority of Indian tennis talent. Balachandran reckoned there were two ways to smoothen it: either get the junior Indians to compete abroad—especially in Europe—on a fairly regular basis, or blend them with the senior circuit at home.

“The best juniors in the country should periodically test waters abroad. It’s about staying with the lot so that when they progress to the seniors, they can move with the lot. Right now, our U-14 and world’s U-14 kids are not in the same league. And you’re seeing the gap when you get to the men’s (level). That is too late to catch up,” he said.

Not every family can afford European sojourns for their child or children. The other option is to course correct internally by having a national circuit which is not junior oriented but men and women oriented. A throwback of sorts to the vibrant domestic system in India from decades ago, where youngsters rubbed shoulders with the country’s elite. After the age-group U-12 and U-14 events, Balachandran said, throw open the gates for the juniors to battle with the Indian pros; those who aren’t competing on the ITF tour week in week out or aren’t able to travel too much outside the country.

“For a 16-year-old to play them is a great opportunity to learn how to build matches. And anyway, if you want to be world standard and are not able to win domestic tournaments by 15-16, that means your level is not there. But you have to encourage the pros to come by offering better prize money (in domestic events). It makes a difference even if the kids watch them play and train,” he added.

It’s the kind of atmosphere Balachandran is trying to replicate at the Rohan Bopanna Tennis Academy in Bengaluru, where he is the consulting head coach. At times when Bopanna is around, the coach gets the former French Open mixed doubles champion to serve to the academy’s U-14 trainees.

“I want them to feel what it is like for a pro player serving and to be receiving at 200kmph. Such opportunities need to be given to more kids across the country. The world of tennis has to be shown to them early,” he said.

“For Indians,” Javia said, “going from juniors to pro is like going from a pond to an ocean.”