PUNE: Vaishnavi Adkar’s sparkling run to the final of the $100,000 ITF event last week in Bengaluru is exactly the kind of spark women’s tennis in India needs. “What Vaishnavi has done this week is not accidental, I’ll tell you that,” Grand Slam champion Rohan Bopanna told TOI. “Reaching W100 final gets you into serious tennis. Lots of credit to her,” added Bopanna, at whose academy the 21-year-old from Pune started training this year.
He pointed out that it was her composure and maturity that stood out all week. “The most impressive part was not just the result, but how she was so composed in big moments. She competed, she problem-solved. That, I felt, was a good maturity in her,” said Bopanna. “In women’s tennis, it has been a while. So it’s about somebody having that belief as well.
And I think that is what I see in Vaishnavi,” he added.
Bopanna sought to put the scale of Vaishnavi’s performance in context.
“When you have a week like this, it also moves you up 200 places in ranking and everything changes. In terms of scheduling as well. Earlier, she was looking at (playing) maybe W15 or W30 (level events). Now you are looking at higher tournaments, W50, 75, even 100. And that is where discipline is needed.”
he pointed out.
Vaishnavi, whose younger sister Asmi is also a tennis player, began playing tennis at the age of six. “It was because we parents didn’t want kids making noise at home,” father Nihar Adkar, who is into construction business, told TOI, “Tennis came from her mother (Gauri), because she likes tennis. Gauri said if the kids are going to do something outside home, it should be tennis.”
Kedar Shah, who coached Vaishnavi since 2014 before she moved to RBTA in January, was not surprised by her performance last week.
“It was expected, it was coming, because she had been playing good tennis,” Shah said. “The end of last year, she reached the $25k semis, before that she won the women’s nationals in Delhi. Vaishnavi did very well in the World University Games (where she won bronze, becoming the second Indian to win a medal at the event). So, it was due. ”
What stood out for Shah in the then 12-year-old was her “ability to hit the ball very hard from any place of the court, even when she was down in matches”.
“That’s something I continued with her. I did not stop her, knowing that she will mature and get physically stronger,” he remembered.
Given the strong foundation under Shah, that transition seemed to happen at a rapid pace in recent months.
“To be honest, we didn’t expect her to be in the final of the next tournament,” said M Balachandran, who began working with Vaishnavi from the week of the WTA 125K event in Mumbai. “These things cannot be really predicted, but I’m also not surprised that she got there, especially after her second match against the Japanese Mai Hontama.
That was a close one, after she won that, then every match was 50-50. ”
While Shah allowed her to retain her core strength, Balachandran polished the rough edges. “The biggest area (of improvement) is her choice of speed in closing out the points. Her choice of speed and shot has come a long way. Now she knows, ‘I need to hit here at this speed, at this spin’. There’s the clarity of how to close out the point based on her position, opponents position, and that’s a significant improvement,” said Balachandran.
After her Bengaluru exploits, Vaishnavi jumped 224 spots to a career-high 466. Bopanna says the hard work begins now.
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