India Abroad - September 08, 2017

By Aziz Haniffa

— WASHINGTON, D.C.
ennis star Rohan
Bopanna, who won his
maiden Grand Slam title
in June with his victory
in the mixed doubles at
the French Open with
Canada’s Gabriela Dabrowski,
says it was all the sweeter
because it wasn’t just a dream
come true, it was the ultimate in
perseverance and hopefully an
inspiration to young adults.

But Bopanna, 37, only the fourth Indian to win a Grand Slam after Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi and Sania Mirza, says his overriding passion now is the tennis academy he established in Bengaluru last year for Indian youth. He hopes it can help produce an Indian singles champ, something he believes is possible in his lifetime.

In Washington, D.C. last month, for the Citi Open, he told India Abroad in an exclusive and wide-ranging interview, that his tennis academy is also geared towards providing poor kids in India an opportunity to play tennis — arguably an elitist sport and the preserve of India’s affluent.

Bopanna acknowledged that it’s regrettable that India, a country of 1. 3 billion people, hasn’t produced one champion in singles tennis, or for that matter any player in the Top 100. At the same time, he affirmed that mixed doubles and doubles matches were hardly peripheral in importance. “There aren’t many countries that have Grand Slam champions whether singles, doubles or mixed doubles, and so, for India, at least it’s a start, where we have doubles and mixed doubles champions,” he said.

He believes the academy
needs to build slowly toward that
goal. “It’s not going to happen
overnight, but it’s going to hap-
pen, maybe in 15-20 years that
we’ll have a singles champion.”
“But, if we don’t have a sys-
tem in place, we are not going to
get there,” he said. “For years,
it’s been the same system in
India. There have been no
changes and so, there has to be
change to make future champi-
ons.”
Producing a singles champion,
he said, means giving all the
needed support to make tennis
affordable and financially acces-
sible and ensuring that the prom-
ising athlete starts young.

That’s why he recently estab-
lished the Rohan Bopanna
Tennis Foundation, he said. “The
main idea is to give back to the
sport and help these kids who
can’t afford to play tennis, and
also to go into the
rural areas and
villages and seek
out talent,” he
said. He said he
believed that lack
of money should
not keep a young-
ster from playing.

Bopanna, 37, said he has never forgotten his rural roots in a city called Coorg. The city, he said, is famous for its coffee plantations.

“That’s where I was
raised and my parents
still live there. I still
go back because it’s a
beautiful countryside
and a hill station,” he
said. “So, these are
the places we need to
go out to and help
these kids to pick up
the sport and who
knows, there may be a champion
who comes out from these
places.”
He has hired two professional
coaches –Aubrey Barrett from the
UK and Dragan Bukumirovic
from Serbia—who are full-time at
the academy to train the 65 or 70
kids already enrolled.

“If we find talent and interest, we start developing it, absolutely,” he said. But the youngsters should also enjoy playing the game.

“Nobody should be forced to
play and that was a priority per-
spective of mine behind starting
this academy and setting up the
Foundation.”
The more promising students,
he said, could become eligible for
scholarships to come to the U.S.
or avail themselves of similar
opportunities. “And from tennis,
besides making friends, you can
also go on to make life choices of
parlaying these friends and net-
works to become a businessman
or entrepreneur or anything. So, I
just want them to start playing
the sport.”
Bopanna said that a major rea-
son for tennis not sharing the
kind of profile and popularity
enjoyed by cricket is because
only one tennis championship
exists in India—in Chennai. It is
moving to Pune next year.

“So, this doesn’t offer much in
terms of opportunities,” he
explained. “Anybody who wants
to play has to travel to Chennai
and it’s very expensive for the
parents.”
Bopanna envisions smaller-
level tournaments more widely
scattered, teaching young players
the skills that could make them
world-class tennis players. “And
that’s when the interest for more
tennis tournaments across India
will also happen,” he said.
“When you have more inter-
national level tennis players
playing in these tournaments —
like this year, we had four
Indians playing in the doubles
finals and it had never happened
before — the crowd loved it,” he
said. Seeing a countryman com-
pete in any sport inspires kids, he
said.

Another challenge: Getting corporate sponsorship for tennis tournaments and players was also “very hard,” unlike in cricket, he said.

Compared to cricket, he said,
fewer Indian tennis players score
victory “because tennis is com-
peting with over 200 countries.
Cricket is not. There are only like
10 countries playing cricket,
while tennis is played in hun-
dreds of countries.”
India also lacks public tennis
courts. “You just can’t pick up a
racket and go out and play. You
have to either be a member of a
club or have the means and
money to have your own private
courts and so on,” he said.

His foundation seeks to provide easier accessibility to the sport. “I want kids to come out and play without worrying about paying for their coaching. … I want them to get the full-time, the full benefits of the coaching, as much as they can because that’s when you are really going to give them the attention. Once a week, no matter what you do, you are not going to know whether the kid has potential or not,” he said.

He said the challenge of build-
ing young champions in India is
tough. “We are competing with
people in the States, where there
are thousands of tennis courts.
At my academy, we just have
four courts and not knowing
whether in five years, I can
renew the lease. I am going liter-
ally year by year and that’s why
I’ve gone to the government ask-
ing to give me some land to
develop this sport, which again,
is a long bureaucratic process —
you don’t deal with just one per-
son, you have to go through the
whole system.”
In the meantime, Bopanna
said, he hopes Indian conglomer-
ates would consider providing
support in the form of corporate
sponsorship. “There are now lots
of opportunities,” he said,
“because tennis is now an
Olympic sport.”