Tricky junior to pro transition: What India’s top players advise

A lot of India’s young tennis players tend to stumble while making the leap to professional circuit

MUMBAI: Competing in the Junior Davis Cup Finals that concluded on Sunday, India finished 14th, losing all but one match against Mexico. The Indian boys qualified for the elite 16-nation competition as winners of the Asia-oceania competition at home earlier this year.

For the team comprising Rushil Khosla (aged 16), Vansh Nandal (15) and Kriish Tyagi (15), the considerable step up in Turkey presented a stiff challenge. A bigger leap though awaits them in the form of the junior-to-professional progression path. “It’s the same as jumping one level to the next. Except, it’s a bigger jump,” Prajnesh Gunneswaran, the last Indian singles player in the top 100, said.

A lot of Indian youngsters tend to stumble in that jump, either taking it too early, too late or with misdirected steps. Is there, therefore, a template in terms of the right time and career stage for juniors to take the pro plunge in the Indian ten

Since 2000, Yuki Bhambri, Somdev Devvarman and Prajnesh Gunneswaran are the only Indian men to have entered the top 100 in singles

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6 nis sphere, which is vastly different from Europe (abundance of tournaments, options) and USA (thriving collegiate circuit)? “There’s no textbook way,” Yuki Bhambri, the former junior world No 1, said. “The goal is always to do well in the pros. So by the time I was 16-17, I was playing a few pro events, Futures and Challengers in India. Once your junior career progresses and you see where you are, you take the senior plunge depending on that.”

There are two contrasting

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5 schools of thought among Indian coaches vis-à-vis the switch: one is to keep playing juniors till the player finds his/her feet at the next level, the other is to not swim too long and too deep in the junior pool irrespective of how well one is floating.

“In India especially, people tend to go to the extreme one way or the other. For me, the right approach is to continue to play the juniors, see how you progress as well,” Bhambri, who reached a career-high 83 in singles, said.

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Somdev Devvarman did win early at the pro level—a Futures tournament in India in 2004 as he turned 19. However, “reality hit me hard” after earning a little over $1000 for it.

And so Devvarman, India’s highest-ranked men’s singles player since the turn of the century, set out on a route many Indian youngsters have been hesitant to explore lately: collegiate tennis in the US. In his four years at the University of Virginia, he became a two-time NCAA singles champion.

“It played a very important role in my development,” the former world No 62 said. “For the first time, I felt no pressure, even financially.”

Rubbing shoulders and playing against the likes of Benjamin Becker, Kevin Anderson and John Isner at NCAA also made Devvarman’s shift to pro a lot smoother. “I’d seen Anderson go pro after his third year, saw Isner go pro after he finished at Georgia, and I saw them have a good amount of success. So the belief factor became a lot more,” he said.

“I just didn’t play enough when I was younger,” Prajnesh, 32, said. “In a way, I limited my exposure to different styles because I didn’t play enough.”

That, in essence, is the key to the tricky junior-pro transition. And, some “honest” advice.

“Pro is where you want to be, but juniors is where you are learning how to fight, play matches, compete under pressure,” Bhambri said.

“If you wanted to go pro as a junior, the signs would be incredibly clear very early on that you have the talent to do so—if you’re honest with yourself and people around you are honest,” Devvarman said. “Otherwise, the pro tour will be a hard place for you to make the transition from 700-900 (ranking) in the world to at least playing qualifiers in the Slams.”