An arena of many a majestic battle

dharwad: having a tennis court in your town is not great news. but how about one with an aura of nostalgia and folklore? the rajadhyaksha tennis pavilion of the dharwad district lawn tennis association (ddlta) simply breathes history. it was 58 years ago that justice rajadhyaksha dreamt of having a tennis complex at a vantage point in dharwad. a year later, the complex saw at the courts two of the greatest stars of world tennis: big bill tilden and the graceful henri cochet (then world number 1 and 2 respectively).ask the old-timers, who were privileged to watch some smashing tennis here. with twinkling eyes, they recall big bill tilden, donald budge, rodney laver, bjorn borg and john mcenroe, five brilliant players in the 110 years of tennis history. the late balasaheb koimatur of dharwad had the honour of playing with those immortals and none other than s.r. narasapur was the referee. youngsters and champions who played a good volley those days were coached by the famed a.c. pereira of mumbai, like lt col kanabargimath, limaye, narsi joshi and waman jamkhandi. limaye and balasaheb are undoubtedly the finest players the complex had produced to date. old-timers remember nandu natekar playing hard to beat jamkhandi and narsi joshi and crowning himself champion of the area. and the famed natekar met his waterloo at the hands of none other than ramanathan krishnan, who went on to become one of the five top players of the world for a number of years. maybe a poetic coincidence that nandu's son gurava fulfilled his father's aspirations of playing for india. he is a davis cupper now and partners champion leander paes. jack arkinstall, the wily australian, came to dharwad to play a few exhibition matches in 1954. he was pitted against australian junior champion bill gilmore, now a celebrated international referee. rachappa, t.k. ramanathan (grandpa of ramesh krishnan), vanarase, barker, g.n. pawar, k. gopal rao, derek d'sa, n.m. srinivas, sachidanand, b.s. ravi, atul gurjar, vazir, zari, r.k. ram, anand amritraj, nandan bal, sher pathan and shashi menon and c.g.k. bhupathy have battled it out on these courts. then came dilip nagarkatti donning pune university colours. the joshi brothers, anand, suhas, shrikant, vivek hosmath, c.s. benni, h.v. kiran, gururaj jamkhandi, chetan ganjali have made this court proud by their performances at inter-university contests. ashok kulkarni and k.h. sanganagudar of ddlta represented karnataka at the all-india civil services tennis tournament held at chandigarh in november. in 1995, the tennis complex was revived through the efforts of then deputy commissioner r.b. agwane. his successors arvind jadhav, yogendra tripathy and later on vandana gurnani and zp ceo nilay mitash continued to help develop the complex, and a cement court and floodlights becomes reality. present dc kapil mohan and zp ceo p.s. vastrad have planned a multi-gym and the equipment will be housed in a new building for which officials are trying to pool in resources through mp s.r. bommai. the pillars who have stood firmly by are satish tagarpur, ramanna kalaswad, lt col s.s. kanabargimath and s.r. narasapur, to mention a few. devanna gaonkar is executive vice-president and gangadharappa is the secretary.