‘To produce top tennis players, we must have a proper system’

Ahmedabad: India’s tennis star Prajnesh Gunneswaran believes that India needs to pick players at a young age to produce world-class players and for that governments and sports federations need to make huge investments. He was speaking at the unveiling of state-of-art indoor sports facility, which includes a tennis court, here on Sunday. The 33-year-old Gunneswaran was asked about the inability of Indian tennis players to break into top-50 of singles rankings. He said, “There are multiple factors. One is (not) having a grassroots-level programme. We need to be able to produce players from the ground up from when they are 5-6 years old.”The Chennai-based player said, “For that you have to have either world-class competition or world-class coaches and of course infrastructure. So, it’s like cricket. When the system is already in place, it becomes easy. At some point of time, there has to be a big investment from government and the federations. We will select coaches who have produced top-10 players, Grand Slam champions and then have them come to India. Be here for 10 to 20 years, transfer the knowledge. Then the Indian coaches, players will pick up from that and from there on, there will be momentum.”He said that it will take time for India to produce top tennis players. “It’s not going to happen overnight. Any player who comes now is basically beating the odds. For example, I went to Spain when I was 16. So, I already had nine years of incorrect practice. I’m not saying I was taught the wrong things. But I was definitely not taught the right things to be a Grand Slam champion. And you can’t be 16-years-old and then be relearning things which take five- six years. This is what happens in case of most players.” “If you see the success that has come over the last 20 years, most of the players have been training outside India. We have athletes now in badminton who are doing well because there is a great system in place. Likes of Gopichand and Padukone are investing their time in sport and producing champions. The same thing needs to happen in tennis,” Gunneswaran, who won a bronze at 2018 Asian Games. It was at the end of the ATP Challenger in Pune that Gunneswaran, who was once ranked as high as 75, decided he has had enough of playing with pain. “Unfortunately, injuries are part and parcel of an athlete’s life. We all try to push our bodies to the limit to get maximum output. When that happens sometimes, there are problems.”The goal, he said, is to get back to the Grand Slams to play Wimbledon, US Open