From sidelines to the centrestage
BOYS TO MEN India’s victory hopes will rest heavily on how Saketh and debutant Ramkumar shape up in the singles
At 127 in the world, or 217 for that matter, you are a nobody to the tennis fan at large. It just isn’t sexy enough to follow those in the trenches – those struggling to qualify for the tournaments that really matter. You know the ones that grab eyeballs on TV and have the big stars frolicking about? The slams and such.
INTO THE ARC LIGHTS
For Saketh Myneni and Ramkumar Ramanathan, it has been a grim trudge through the nether zone of the tennis world so far. On Friday, when both are slated to make their Davis Cup debut for India in a live rubber, for a brief while they will be transported under the harsh arc lights that are the lot of anyone playing for the Tricolour. It’s skewed, this national focus. It judges either too harsh or excessively ebullient. There is hardly any middle ground for the lay Indian fan.
That then is the cauldron that awaits Saketh and Ramkumar on Friday. And the wet isn’t going to take the singe away from their Davis Cup debut. The soggy courts may just well compound their problems.
At 28, Saketh has to know that he’s probably been labelled ‘already too old’ to break into the upper echelons of the game and stay there consistently. The finance and economics major from the University of Alabama has come back to the tennis circuit after completing his education and has done a remarkable job of rushing up to 127 in the rankings. Saketh has a big game and plays with fluid abandon. He is also one of the politest tennis players your correspondent has met in his three decades of association with the sport. The man from Visakhapatnam has a pretty high sweat rate and he will be loath to let the match stretch to five sets.
At 21, Ramkumar has come a long way from his humble origins in Chennai. He has been nurtured through pivotal infusion of regular funds from the Tamil Nadu Tennis Association and that support has propped him to 217 in the world. He trains in Spain and has had the most amount of critical tournament exposure abroad amongst the present lot that’s striving to make the transition from the junior circuit to the pros. Ramkumar unleashes a mean serve and whacks that forehand real hard but even he is untried in a five setter.
RANKINGS ARE MERE NUMBERS
On paper, our men are far higher ranked than the Koreans. But Davis Cup has consistently been about heart. Rankings are many a time mere numbers that may denote prowess but don’t necessarily guarantee performance. At 6’4” (Saketh) and 6’2” (Ramkumar), these two are some of the tallest Indian singles players ever. On grass their lanky frames will make for serves booming in from heights that’ll make returning a nightmare for the Koreans. The same grass, however, is damp and will force the ball to stay low. Digging it out will demand much from those tall physiques.
India has chosen to play on grass again after 2008. The surface, with its long blades and low bounce, was pivotal in scripting Paes’ Davis Cup legend. Along with the heat, it was crucial to our really successful campaigns in the past. The new generation of players has been reared on hardcourts and most of them share Ivan Lendl’s aversion to the surface that he said was fit only for cows. It was captain Anand Amritraj’s idea to try and get back to grass when we host. Now, it’s up to Saketh and Ramkumar to prove him right.