Though they started playing together in doubles three years ago, it was during the last 10 months that things have fallen in place for N. Sriram Balaji and Vishnu Vardhan. It culminated in the pair securing its maiden Grand Slam (Wimbledon) main draw entry, on Wednesday.
Over the last one year, the duo has won five ATP Challengers including one in Chennai in February. Despite winning titles, it had a few setbacks too in between when Balaji had an ankle injury and Vishnu took a break from the game for personal reasons, which affected the results when they got back together.
But the off-court chemistry between the two players of similar mould ensured they found form again and are set to make their debut at the hallowed lawns of the All England Club.
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Speaking to The Hindu , Vishnu Vardhan recalled : “We had been playing doubles on the Challenger tour for the past three years, but our primary focus was on singles. We were good friends off-court and decided to do a full schedule and see where it could go.
“What we realised was, we were winning matches even though we played a crude form of doubles. So we decided around last year, if we could finetune and play more efficiently, we could definitely do well.”
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The 28-year-old Balaji, who trains at the Alexander Waske academy in Germany, added, “We know we are not the complete package and there are areas we have to improve, but over the last year, we were able to slowly improve by focusing on a particular set of skills and reviewing it periodically.”
Vishnu, who played in the London Olympics with Leander Paes, said: “We knew Wimbledon was our only chance as it was the only event that had qualifying for doubles. So we worked hard with that in mind to get our rankings into the qualifying cut-off and take it from there.”
The 30-year-old Vishnu also credited the role of Balachandran Manikandan under whom the duo trained in the off-season in Bengaluru. “We owe a lot to him because we only paid him for three weeks, but for the past six months, he has been constantly in touch, seeing our games and helping us.”
While not setting big targets, the pair hopes the fact that they are relatively unknown on the tour could help them spring a surprise or two.