Learnt to take early losses as learnings: Maaya Rajeshwaran Revathi

MUMBAI: A year after her amazing run, where she advanced as a 15-year-old wild card qualifier all the way to the semifinals, Maaya Rajeshwaran Revathi is back at the L&T Mumbai Open.

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The setting may have changed, as the WTA 125K tournament has moved from the Cricket Club of India to a new home this year — the Maharashtra State Lawn Tennis Association (MSLTA) at Colaba. But for the promising teenager from Coimbatore, that’s an irrelevant detail. Mumbai, she says, “has always given me the best memories of my tennis career”.

“I won the U-12 Nationals here four years ago,” she tells TOI ahead of her practice session on Sunday. “That was the first tournament I won that made me realize, maybe I could do something with tennis.”

Those who watched her progress from the qualifiers to the last four a year ago would readily back those sentiments. For Maaya, it’s what came after that has been of greater value.

Playing both, the juniors and on the ITF circuit, brought some success but also dealt her the humbling blow of early losses. “I started the year with winning a J300 tournament in Delhi, and the first three months were very good. And then, there were tournaments where I lost first round, which I didn’t expect,” says Maaya.

“So it’s been like a huge learning for me because everyone’s told me that it’s a phase of my career where I’m in the transition from juniors to pro, and I’m still playing juniors, but I’m starting women’s tournaments as well. So that is something that everyone has told me is going to be a bit up and down.

“But I think I’ve learned a lot in terms of how to manage myself when losses happen, how to get out of it, to take them as learnings instead of losses. And there have been so many people who have actually helped me get out of those losses, because honestly, I believe at a young age it’s not very easy to accept certain losses.”

That’s where earning the chance to train at the Rafa Nadal Academy in Mallorca has played a big role for Maaya, who is currently ranked 51 on the ITF juniors circuit while holding a WTA ranking of 650.

“After it started, I think more than the tennis aspect, it’s the professional aspect, in terms of having so many pros in the academy,” says Maaya, citing the examples of Spain’s Jaume Munar, the current ATP world No. 39, Alexandra Eala, the Filipino talent who reached a career-high WTA singles ranking of world No. 49 last month, and Russian teenager Alina Korneeva, a double junior Grand Slam champion.

“I think they’re very experienced in handling players that way, in terms of helping them get better and get out of that phase with that transition.

“When you’re around athletes who are that professional and you’re around coaches who work with them, you kind of learn a lot in terms of how to go about things, the amount of discipline that they have, how they handle everything off court.

“And the most lovely part is all of them are very approachable,” she adds. Take the man who moulded Nadal into one of the game’s greatest ever players, ‘Uncle Toni’, who now serves as director at his nephew’s academy. “Just his presence on court creates a difference,” Maaya says. “To have him just watching even without coaching, it’s going to be like — ‘I’m going to play my best tennis out there today’. He’s someone who can just give you motivation without even saying anything.”

The education, of course, stretches beyond the technical and physical aspects of the game. Coping with increasing media attention in a nation starved of tennis icons is something the Academy is also helping Maaya learn to gradually embrace.

“We always try to tell Maaya that she’s very lucky to be receiving this attention, and she has to take it with a positive mindset,” says Polina Radeva, a Bulgarian coach who works closely with Maaya at the academy and is with her for the Mumbai Open this week. “Ever since the moment we saw her, everybody loved Maya because she’s so energetic on the court. Our goal this year is to try to get her to play a lot of matches and to try to get her to compete as much as possible as we want to make sure that she finds this high level of consistency in her performances.”


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