Australian Open 2024

[rajitghosh]

Leander and Mahesh in men's doubles and Rohan and Sania in mixed doubles have finished 4th in the Olympics. I don't see either of that getting repeated. Rohan is the last of our great doubles players. Once he retires we won't even remain a doubles powerhouse.

[jayakris]

^^^ Not so sure. Don't forget that Rohan became a top-25 doubles player only at age 30.5 years.

At age 27 through 29, Rohan was only getting into the doubles top-100 and trying to sneak into top-60... We have had several players doing that lately. I won't be surprised if one of them ends up as another Indian doubles great (Ramkumar, Arjun Kadhe, Niki Poonacha, or even Yuki though he is 31 now). We have a 25 year old (Anirudh) sneaking into the top-75 now, and a 22 year old (Ritwik) sneaking into top-150.

In 2007 when LP and MB were nearing 35 yrs of age, I thought they would be the last top-25 doubles greats from India, as we had nobody else in the top-100 and not many in the top-200. And Rohan started going big time fairly soon after. Same thing can happen again, and we have more candidates who might do that now. Again, Ramkumar is the most probable one to make it to top-25 once he fully takes to doubles and drops singles. Yuki may too, but he is a bit older at 31 and is taking too long to make big waves after dropping singles.

[Atithee]

And that would be sad. I would take one singles player over tens of top doubles and can’t wait for the day instead of going ga ga over this achievement.

Bring the rotten eggs and tomatoes. I’m ready.

[jayakris]

^^ That is not going to happen for a while. I expect at least one among the Manas, Aryan, and Yuvan group to hit top-150 in the next 3-4 years. Sumit will hopefully make top-100 soon and stay there till then too. But I wish we had ten u24 guys in the top-200 like Argentina has now, or even three u24 players in the top-200, like China has. We have only two u24 guy in the top-700 now.

[Atithee]

If we ban doubles in India, there’s a chance it may happen. Or at least pay no attention to that.

[jayakris]

If we ban doubles in India, there’s a chance it may happen. Or at least pay no attention to that.

No, I don't think doubles is affecting our singles players. Lack of timely and good-quality coaching, and support from AITA at the right time (ages 14 through 19) is what is still hurting us. Nobody even half-way decent in singles (ie making top-500 by say age 22) has paid any attention to doubles. We haven't had too many such guys for a long time though.

[arjun2761]

Fully agree with Jay. Doubles somehow preventing our singles players developing makes little sense unless we assume our players are complete idiots. The prize money and other incentives in tennis are 8x that of doubles (per person), so someone intentionally giving up on singles for doubles is completely illogical. To put it in perspective, Rohan's runners-up check of A$200,000K at the AO is just a smidge more than Sumit's second round check of A$180,000.

The reasons for why we are better at doubles compared to singles are quite obvious. Doubles enticing players away from singles is a very minor reason if it is a reason at all. In fact, you could make the argument, that more Indians try tennis as a sports career because there are doubles options beyond the very few singles successes we've had.

[Kumar]

In last 25 years when there has been lot
More immigration to US, I cannot think of single kid of Indian origin being in top 100 let along taking the world by storm. There are lot of kids at college level, but very few making it to top 100 or 200 in ATP. I am hoping that this changes soon

Is it possible that kids taking up tennis in India (and in extension the US) are not genetically well endowed to make it far in tennis? Tennis has shifted and has become a sport requiring power and athleticism. It is not accesible to broader society when compared to say other games like soccer, badminton where there may be more athletic kids.

Doubles on the other hand requires less athleticism compared to singles. The skills for doubles like volleying, reflex all of that match up better.

Also, very few Americans are making it to top 10 in tennis. Was Andy Rodrick the last American to win Grandslam (male)? One of the primary reason attributed to that is top athletes are not playing tennis .

In the other hand, in Golf we have Akshay Bhatia and other golfers of Indian origin already making waves. Golf is more a skilled support and Indians are seemingly doing better.

[prasen9]

Maybe there is something to it. I see a lot of latinos doing well in baseball but not too many in tennis. A lot of Indian kids are not making it in sports per se. Instead of genetics, is it the environment? We (Gautam and Rohan excepted) possibly encourage our kids to secure their future via education a whole lot more. The key number is not how many Indian-origin kids are in the U.S. but how many Indian-origin kids are in sports programs in schools, school teams, etc. I think the number is low. At least anecdotally speaking. My daughter was perhaps the only Indian origin kid seriously in their athletic program. One school but still. Many more white and African-origin kids. And, when the decision point came to decide whether to take up a practice regimen for 5-6 hours a day in a program or just focus on getting into a good college, she decided not to choose the training regimen and go all in. I gave her the choice but I suppose it is hard to shake off the values of the community you grow up in.

[sameerph]

And they do it .


[F] (2) Rohan Bopanna (IND) / Mathew Ebden (AUS) d. Simone Bolelli (ITA) / Andrea Vavassori (ITA) 76(0) 75

Rohan is the oldest ever grand slam winner .

[prajgolf]

Congratulations to Rohan Bopanna

His last 3 Grand Slam results - SF, F & Winner. The bar is going up.

[jayakris]

In last 25 years when there has been lot more immigration to US, I cannot think of single kid of Indian origin being in top 100 let along taking the world by storm. There are lot of kids at college level, but very few making it to top 100 or 200 in ATP. I am hoping that this changes soon

Don't forget Rajeev Ram, the highest ranked Indian-origin male since Ramesh Krishnan. He was in the top-100 for several years, as recently as 2016. In the next 10+ years we will see more Indian-Americans because so many are in the US junior top-500 levels these days.

[jayakris]

And they do it .

[F] (2) Rohan Bopanna (IND) / Mathew Ebden (AUS) d. Simone Bolelli (ITA) / Andrea Vavassori (ITA) 76(0) 75

Rohan is the oldest ever grand slam winner .

Oldest male... Martina Navratilova at 46 is still the oldest, I think.

What a legend Bops has become! And I am glad that he is also getting that respect now on the tour.

So, we will have somebody in tennis at the Olympics again (hopefully Sumit also). He will be the second oldest male player ever in Olympics history, and the oldest in the last 100 years too. Wow.

[Sanjay]

In last 25 years when there has been lot more immigration to US, I cannot think of single kid of Indian origin being in top 100 let along taking the world by storm. There are lot of kids at college level, but very few making it to top 100 or 200 in ATP. I am hoping that this changes soon

Don't forget Rajeev Ram, the highest ranked Indian-origin male since Ramesh Krishnan. He was in the top-100 for several years, as recently as 2016. In the next 10+ years we will see more Indian-Americans because so many are in the US junior top-500 levels these days.

The problem is Indian American kids in tennis (like my son) get into tennis because they love it, can do well and their parents are well to do enough to send them to good coaching, but the goal is to have an activity to get into Stanford and Harvard. Once they do that, then the lose the fire to be on the tour. Like Samir Banerjee or the other kid who went to Stanford from Indiana. They play a few Challengers to have fun but nothing more than that.

[Kumar]

Congrats Bopanna..

Is it not strange that we had three double players that were best of the best, but could not win a single Olympic medal in doubles, but a player who was barely in top 75 won a bronze medal.