Indian tennis events dry up to leave top players dismayed

Usually this time of the year, Prajnesh Gunneswaran, like other top pros of the country, is in India to play in a rare home tournament, the ATP Pune Challenger. This time the India No. 1 is hopping across the US, competing in the Knoxville Challenger this week after reaching the quarter-finals in Charlottesville.

Like last year, the 2021 ATP Pune Challenger was cancelled due to the travel complexities involved amid the pandemic. Staging the event is dependent on players trickling in from around the world and being able to leave without quarantine hassles. India has thus fallen off the ATP calendar in 2021, at the Tour as well as the Challenger level; the ATP 250 Tata Open Maharashtra in Pune and the Bengaluru Challenger were shelved this year.

Worse, the 2022 Tata Open, the only ATP Tour event in the country, appears all but gone from its allotted February slot with the ATP requiring commitments—financial and logistical—from the organisers months in advance, which, amid the uncertainties of the ever-evolving situation, isn’t coming.

“The issue is with the government policy and quarantine protocols. If players travelling from other counties have to quarantine, it becomes a non-starter. Their availability and willingness to travel to India is the first major step,” said Prashant Sutar, tournament director of the Tata Open.

It would mean a two-year absence of top level tournaments in the country, since the Bengaluru Challenger held in February 2020. For Indian players, the limited luxury of competing in select events at home has been snatched away. It does not appear that the wait would end soon.

“It’s a huge setback,” Gunneswaran, the world No. 180, said. “The Tata Open is one of those big events where Indian players have a chance to do well and build confidence. Generally for the sport itself to have that kind of exposure and for the next crop of Indian players to see and aspire to be there…all of that takes a big hit when these tournaments don’t happen.”

One of Gunneswaran’s two Challenger wins was at Bengaluru in 2018, beating Saketh Myneni in the final. Young Sumit Nagal won the previous year. Yuki Bhambri has won the Pune Challenger twice. The benefits from elite tournaments at home go beyond merely providing an ideal platform for Indian singles pros to make a deep run and gain significant ranking points. The trickle-down effect is in the form of wild cards to local players, and for a wider group of Indians to get into these Challengers with lower cut-offs. That is near-impossible in, say, Europe where there are more pros jostling for spots and the travel costs rise exponentially for Indians.

For example, at the 2020 Tata Open, four of the five singles wild cards went to Indians, and as many as 15 Indians featured in the singles main draw at the Bengaluru Challenger. They included Gunneswaran, 480th-ranked Sidharth Rawat and qualifier Abhinav Shanmugam, who rose from 1093 in the world before it to 896 after it.

“Indians historically have had good results in home tournaments; it’s easier for a lot more players to compete and get key results,” Gunneswaran said.

Sutar said: “In Europe and the US, the cut-off to enter Challengers is around 200-300 (world ranking). In India, it is usually 500-600. With no tournaments in India, most Indian players are suffering.”

Much of the Asian circuit has been hit by the pandemic. In August, the ATP Tour cancelled the Asia swing for the rest of the season. India is gradually starting the wheel again in the lower rung ITF (International Tennis Federation) Tour. The ITF men’s M15 in Indore that began on Monday is the first international tournament in the country since March. Seven men’s and women’s ITF events are scheduled in India in the next two months.

A dearth of top level tennis was glaring even in pre-Covid India. It has hosted just one ATP 250 event (inaugurated in Delhi in 1996, it was played in Chennai from 1997 to 2017 before the shift to Pune) and the couple of Challengers. The scene in women’s top-level tennis is bleaker. The lone WTA 125 event in Mumbai—the first elite tournament in India since 2012—wound up after the 2017 and 2018 editions. The costs are steep (the WTA Mumbai Open had a total financial commitment of $115,000, the 2020 ATP Tata Open $610,010 and the Pune Challenger $54,160) with sponsorships drying up.

“Apart from sponsors, the government’s role also becomes important in terms of getting funds,” Sutar, also vice-president of the Maharashtra State Lawn Tennis Association, said. “Hopefully we can get some WTA tournaments back next year. The plan should be for India to have more tournaments within the Asian circuit.”

India pales in comparison with some other Asian countries when hosting tournaments even at the ITF level. In the ITF men’s tour, India went from hosting four events in 2018 to none in 2019. China had 15 in both seasons. In the ITF women’s tour, India events dropped from seven in 2018 to six in 2019. In China, they rose from 23 to 25.

The issue goes down to the junior ITF level, which has five tournament categories, J1 (highest) to J5 (lowest). Of the 13 junior ITF tournaments scheduled in India this year, 12 are J4 or J5 events with just one J3 tournament. In 2019, India hosted a couple of J2 and J3 events among 12. That year, China hosted 18, three of them J2 and one J1.

“Finding a way to host as many international events as possible, across the level, has to be one of the biggest priorities if you want tennis to grow in India,” Gunneswaran said. “It can’t be that we have one Tour event once a year and people forget about it. A pipeline of events makes a huge difference.”