The Hindu : Sport : Tara confident of building on her maiden ITF title

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Thursday, Jun 21, 2007
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Tara confident of building on her maiden ITF title

Special Correspondent

‘A great motivation to see Sania doing so well’
‘I need to play the big points better’

TALENTED: Tara Iyer after a promising start to her career has had to wait a long time to find success.

NEW DELHI: She had always held promise, but Tara Iyer has just about started playing to potential, as she asserted herself by winning the singles title in the $10,000 ITF women’s tennis tournament in Portugal last week.

For someone who at the age of 14 had made the quarterfinals of a similar tournament in July 2003, in only her second professional event at Baltimore, it has been a long wait.

In fact, Tara also made it to the quarterfinals of a $25,000 tournament, beating Rushmi Chakravarthi and Sanaa Bhambri, in 2004.

Happy

“I am quite happy with this title. It is pretty big for me. This could have come a bit quicker, but I am not disappointed. I had lost lots of months because of a knee injury.

“I have worked pretty hard and am capable of improving further. I am looking forward to building on this title and winning more at higher levels,” said Tara talking to The Hindu.

“This was the fourth time I was making the semifinals, and I had learnt from previous experiences. It is satisfying,” said Tara, who made all her semifinals in the last few weeks in Indonesia and Portugal, after her morale-boosting stint with the Indian Fed Cup team in April. “It was really a great experience to be part of the Indian team. Shikha, Sunitha, Ankita and I cheered for each other,” said Tara, who won one of her two singles matches without dropping a game against Jordan, but lost the other match to the talented Albina Khabibulina of Uzbekistan.

Having lost to Sania Mirza in the final of an ITF grade I junior tennis tournament at Manila in April 2003, Tara has a lot of respect for the path-breaking efforts of Sania.

“It is a great motivation for us to see Sania doing so well. When I played her in the juniors I didn’t know that I was facing someone special. She has shown the way for all of us and it is very important for Indian women’s tennis,” stressed Tara.

Polish her game

Tara knows that she needs to polish her game a bit further to get more consistent results. “I need to play the big points better. That is what distinguishes the top players. I will try to come to the net more often, because I have strong ground-strokes,” said Tara.

Ranked 438 now, Tara believes that she can break into the top-200 before the year runs out, if she remains healthy and stays focused.

“I know it gets tough from here. All the big points are lying in the WTA events. I will work my way up,” Tara assured.

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