Sport doesn’t take long to grace its precocious lot with their moment of reckoning as in the case of Ramkumar Ramanathan.
At 19, little would he have known that the New Year’s eve would be marked by something as momentous, when he came back from a set down to defeat the top-ranked Indian Somdev Devvarman in the first round of his first-ever ATP world tour event, the Chennai Open in 2013-14.
The win, though not magnitudinous in nature, was a significant one nevertheless, in that it kept the promise of a potential success story alive that otherwise would have gradually started receding into the realm of quixotic fantasy.
And Ramkumar knows it better than anyone else. “The victory against Somdev, definitely,” he says when asked to pick a victory that stands out from the rest in his career so far.
Without reeling in the euphoric hangover that such a maiden victory against a high-profile opponent entails, he clearly stated his objective of breaking into the top 200 in the rankings by the end of that year.
Nearly a year and a half later, he’s placed at 209 following a steady spike in his career marked by reasonable success in the ITF Futures and ATP Challenger circuit.
So what has changed over the period of time? “I’ve learned to push myself more. That win (against Somdev) was a big confidence booster. I’ve started taking risks and go for my shots without any inhibition,” he says.
As far as his fitness regimen and the technical aspects of his game are concerned, a large share of the credit could be attributed to the Sanchez-Casal Tennis Academy in Barcelona that he has been frequenting ever since his first visit in 2010.
“What’s special about the academy is that it has all the facilities that a player might need under one roof. I owe a lot to my coaches Joan Balcells and Sergio Casal in the academy and Thyagarajan Chandrasekaran in India,” he says.
Not long ago that Indian tennis exponent Vijay Amritraj say that Ramkumar had to work on his shot selection and movement after he crashed out in the first round of the Chennai Open this year.
Ramkumar says that he has been striving to strike the right balance between defence and attack in his play.
“I’ve been trying to mix it up and achieve balance. For instance, I need to cut on the slices during the early phase of a match and improve and employ a lot of backhand shots,” he says.
Soon after, he followed up a bitter first round exit in the Australian Open Qualifiers with a win in the first round of the French Open qualifiers beating a higher-ranked Guido Andreozzi of Argentina. “Competition at that level is obviously very high and it’s very professional. Once you are there, it makes you want to push hard,” he says.
He was part of the Bangalore Raptors team that featured Thomas Enqvist, Feliciano Lopez and Venus Williams, in the Champions Tennis League, a brain-child of Vijay Amritraj, which had a successful debut last year.
The league provided a platform for the young Indian talent to rub shoulders with the big names in tennis exposing them to high level of professionalism.
He said that he was eagerly awaiting this year’s edition though he was unsure whether it would take place.
Great learning curve“It’s definitely one of the best things to have happened to Indian tennis. It’s an honour to mingle and play alongside such big players.
“They share a lot of inputs and we had so much fun. It was a great learning curve. I’m eager and just hope that it takes place this year.”
On the road ahead for him, he says, “I’m just focusing on playing a lot of matches irrespective of the results. I’ll play more in the Challenger circuit.
“As of now, I’ve been preparing for the ATP Challenger in Milan.” He sure knows better to dwell on the present rather than get anxious about the future that’s almost always in a quandary.
(This is a weekly feature on the sports scene in Chennai)
