TALE OF TWO ACADEMIES

When Mahesh Bhupathi said the system doesn’t create champions, the statement required probing. The public vs private debate took us to two tennis academies, AITA’s National Tennis Academy in Gurgaon and CGK Bhupathi’s Tennis Village in Bangalore. One turned out to be a nursery for tsunami victims, the other a centre for tennis excellence
Krishna Bhupathi’s childhood was hardly privileged, but the dreams his father instilled in him were seven star. “My father only spoke of the Roches and Rosewalls,” he said. CGK, as he’s known in tennis circles, learnt early not to settle for anything less than the best. The Tennis Village, his hightech facility, now home to his son Mahesh’s pet project — Apollo Tyres Mission 2018 — is proof of that. “The child is my hero,” he says. “And if I don’t give him the best, how can I expect him to give me his best?” That was the idea behind the facility, thrown open to the 20 children, aged between 9 and 18, among whom hopefully there’s a potential Grand Slam singles champion. From the landscaped gardens to the manicured greens, to the sparkling pool, scrubbed floors, creatively engineered study rooms, and the state-of-the-art gymnasium, it’s apparent that it’s a performance driven set-up. If the children are the centre of the scheme, then the staff are its pillars. It’s easy to tell that Mahesh Bhupathi spent much time and energy while selecting the people to take his scheme forward. Former India Davis Cupper Prahlad Srinath is at the centre of the coaching venture. As a player, Srinath was that rare mix of the solid and the spectacular, as coach he’s both patient and demanding. Canada’s effusive Bobby Mahal has been recently roped in. They and the other coaches are assisted by a battery of physios and trainers, among whom is Javier Capitaine, who has worked with Maria Sharapova and David Nalbandian. After 70 minutes of dodging traffic, potholes and exhaust fumes, the gates of the Nation Tennis Academy seem nearly like a mirage. On the Pataudi-Gurgaon road, not-so-far-away from the Capital, the 2003-established academy is what 33 children call home. Built with the sole purpose of training Grand Slam champions, the focus of the academy, in the course of five years of its inception, has been tweaked. It was launched with much fanfare and with many a hope resting on its foundations. The AITA had enlisted some of the best names in the business to realize the dream of champions. T Chandrasekhar, a coach par excellence, joined the academy while Sunil Yajaman was the project supervisor. The most promising of Indian juniors were handpicked for the first batch of trainees. Players like Somdev Devvarman, Karan Rastogi, Sanam Singh and girls like Isha Lakhani, Ankita and Sanaa Bhambri spent months here on the then-nine, now 10 courts, under the sun, practicing and fine-tuning their skills.