jai_in_canada wrote: ↑Thu Apr 26, 2018 3:40 pmGreat to see the young lads competing hard, achieving improving results, and showing good determination. Gives me hope and optimism for the future of Indian tennis. Curious which Indian academies are producing these players.
I think this has nothing really to do with any of the Indian academies. Indians are able to come up with the funds needed to go to Europe and learn; mainly in the Spanish tennis centers and some in Germany. I think what is also helping them is that they have all become comfortable with clay because of that training. Now they also travel together a lot more, they see each other play and win, they talk to each other about what they are doing, and mentally they have developed much more of a can-do spirit. Don't forget that practice partners are also important. In the past, our players would stay away from clay and the odd guys like a Harsh or Prakash (or even Somdev) would go to some clay events only out of necessity with there being no good hard court events that they could get into. They would show up and find only some odd guys like them being there to hit against, as the good clay guys will hit against each other in practice. All those things make a difference.
Basically clay is a surface where those with basic talent and good physical and mental training can do a lot more, even without superlative skills in serving, volleying or movement, like needed on faster hard court and grass events. So, it is no surprise that Indians can do well on that surface, if they have been in environments like at the European academies long enough like these guys have, and have worked hard themselves. The earlier guys just didn't have the mental/physical training or friends-support to take clay seriously and chart out a plan for a few weeks like these guys are doing now in China and Taiwan.
Basically they are all feeding off each other to some extent too.
. Perhaps, a bit too much to expect.