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AITA sends big contigent to Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy

This is as per press release from AITA -

AITA has sent the following players left for training to the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, USA under the Commanwealth Games Preparation Scheme of the Government:
S. No. BOYS
1. Ashutosh Singh
2. Vivek Shokeen
3. Abhijeet Tiwari
4. Vijayant Malik
5. Navdeep Singh
6. Vishnu Vardhan
7. VM Ranjeet
8. Sriram Balaji
9. Ronak Manuja
10. Arun Kumar (Coach)

Girls -

1. Shweta Chandra Rana
2. Ratnika Batra
3. Rishika Sunkara
4.Parul Goswami
5. Poojashree Venkatesh



Other batch of six players will leave for training on 21st/Feb/09 :

S. No. BOYS GIRLS
1. Divij Sharan

Girls -
1. Shivika Burman
2. Shalini Sahoo
3. Rushmi Chakravarthy
4. Aishwarya Agarwal
5. Soniyaa Dayal
6. Shalini Thakur Chawla (Coach)





They start training from 10th/Feb/09. The boys will be training there till March 10th and the girls will be there till March 30th.

Good intiative from AITA. Hopefully, it will help the players to devlop their game. Ones missing are Sunil Sipayea & Bhambri sisters among girls.

Golden chance for Vishnuvardhan. He has some serious talent and hopefully this stint will help him in some or the other way. Three months is too short a period but it will be nice if Vishnu realizes how good USA is and may be he will consider joining a college there.

IMO Bob Brett would have been a better choice. Both Sania and Yuki have become world class players after their stay at Bob Brett academy. May be AITA should consider him too. Why always Nick Bollettieri?

Yuki didn't go to Brett's academy. He has always been at NBTA.

Jay

Jay, Yuki was at Bob Brett academy for 3 weeks in 2006. Just like Sania, it was a short stint but both of them have become world class players! It is a strange coincidence though, in reality may be it has very little to do with Bob Brett. But still we can't completely rule out his impact on them when they were young.

I don't remember his going to Bob Brett at all .. I guess I didn't pay attention. Jay

I too don't remember Yuki going to Bob Brett. Even if he went in 2006 , he must be only 13 then & not sure what impact it had on his game. He has been going regularly to NBTA since last couple of years. According to him, his trip last year around August - September last yeat helped him a lot. He went on a winning spree in juniors after that hardly losing anything if at all.

However, it seems that Yuki is now in their elite group playing with the likes of Kei Nishikori , Taylor Dent etc. So, his game would have benefitted from that as well. I am not sure if the Indian contigent going there would get to play & practice with top players.

Sandeep is right, Yuki had 3 weeks training stint under Bob Brett in San Remo, Italy in the summer of 2006 ... I think that happened after Apollo Tyres decided to undertake his training expenses in 2006.

But agree with Sameer that NBTA training helped him to improve as totla player.

Here is 2007 news, Indian Express 20th January 2007

The Delhiite who was one among the eight juniors to be sent by the All India Tennis Association (AITA) for a five-week training stint in Europe last July, said the biggest positive he took out from the trip was the will never to give up. “Nobody gives an inch there. Even when they are match point down, they fight it out till its over. I’ve tried to imbibe that aggression in me,” he said. Bhambri also had a three-week stint under Bob Brett in Italy last June where the coach had worked a lot on the youngster’s serve.

Thanks Jaydeep for the link. After Yuki won the AO juniors title, the first thing that struck my mind was Bob Brett! After Jay's post I thought I will google for it but Jaydeep provided us with the link.

As I mentioned earlier, Bob Brett might have little impact on Sania/Yuki, but it is a strange coincidence that both of them had a short stint at San Remo and both of them today are the best hopes for India in future. It is just a wild thought that AITA should also look at Bob Brett.

I asked this question to Peter Polanski's (CAN) coach who one time told me that Polanski and Cilic were hitting together in Bob Brett's. "Bob Brett's by far...." that was his answer.
Since hitting and playing against good players is a key part of development, NBTA can be useful only if you find good players to hit and play against with on a regular basis.

Two thoughts regarding the relative merits of nbta and Bob Brett...firstly, if a player is technically sound, ie with no major glitches in any stroke, then nbta is a better option as one has a larger pool of players to hone their games against/with. Also the physical training available at nbta is of a much higher standard and far more professional. Having said that, if any player requires correction, then brett is much, much better as one receives personalized attention..but its a smaller set up and doesnt offer the kind of exposure and experience that nbta does. Secondly, sania's serve is perhaps the weakest part of her game (coming a close second to her abysmal movement), so i dont think BB helped much...and yuki's serve action, too, remains bizarre, if u watched him at the Chennai Open... any way, bottomline is that there is no system in INDIA yet that can provide tennis players with coaching expertise and professional guidance vis-a-vis fitness, nutrition, conditioning and recovery that is needed to succeed on the big stage....

The players seem to be happy after the training stint -

Indian men optimistic after Florida stint


Lets hope they show improved performance in upcoming futures.

Yes, Indian F1 futures should tell us how much they got benefited from the program.

I wonder if our kids went to Florida and practised against each other -- that could have been done in India at a cheaper cost. If they got to hit with the better players then there will be some benefit. As Sandeep correctly points out, let us see if any of them deliver in the current round of Futures.

suresh wrote:I wonder if our kids went to Florida and practised against each other

No, if you read the report, they did hit against Max Miryni, etc.

I did not like the bit about watching a whole bunch of names and was wondering if they only watched. I guess Mad Max counts as a good player.