The state of Indian tennis: Banished from the 100 club

For instance, Italy, the fast-rising powerhouse in modern tennis, boasts of nine men and two women in the current singles top-100. India has none.

The last time an Indian—male or female—entered that list was a couple of years ago, when Prajnesh Gunneswaran had a nine-month stint as a top-100 player in the ATP rankings from February to November 2019. He became only the third male player from the country to get there since the turn of the century. Somdev Devvarman quenched a long Indian drought in the top-100 tank in August 2010 before Yuki Bhambri came along in October 2015.

“Tennis is a sport where you’re rewarded for being consistent,” Bhambri said. “And the top-100 spot reflects that.”

Consistency and Indian tennis have not got along in the recent past. Devvarman’s career-best of world No. 62 in 2011 is the highest any singles player from the country has gone since Ramesh Krishnan’s No. 23 in January 1985. Collectively, though, India’s 21st century top-100 trio has spent 123 weeks in it, a far cry from when Krishnan went 10 straight years as a top-100 player through the 1980s.

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That was also the time India’s footprint in that space was bigger and bolder. In the decade in which ATP moved to computerized rankings (1973), there were five Indian singles players—Vijay Amritraj, Anand Amritraj, Sashi Menon, Jasjit Singh and Krishnan—among the elite 100. Vijay soared to world No. 18 in 1980, and five years later, Krishnan rose to the 23rd spot. Alongside the Amritraj brothers, he kept the Indian flavour in the top-100 in the 1980s. Krishnan’s consistency carried into the early part of the next decade, which also saw the emergence of Leander Paes as he sneaked into the singles top-100 in 1998 before finding greener pastures, and the rankings summit, in doubles.

The fall

As the new century dawned, the country’s footprint in the club deteriorated. There was no Indian top-100 male player for more than a decade, a period that needed the brilliance and spark of a young Hyderabad woman to keep India’s singles visibility alive. Sania Mirza not just broke the glass ceiling, but also the WTA top-100 rankings in February 2005, spending the large part of the next six years in it while rising to a career-high world No. 27 in 2007.

However, by then, the dizzy heights that the Paes-Mahesh Bhupathi combo had reached had changed the face of the doubles game in the country, with Mirza soon becoming a successful addition to it. Save for an odd spark like Devvarman and Bhambri, India’s singles stars at the top level have faded since.

Guys like Sumit Nagal and Ramkumar Ramanathan, each with diverse skills, have come close before falling back in the pecking order; the former climbing to 122 last year and the latter to 111 in 2018. Ankita Raina—the lone woman carrying India’s flag in singles at the top level after Mirza—has kept at it but has only managed to crack the top-100 code in doubles, with a highest ranking of 160 in singles thus far.

“The reason why the line gets drawn between the 100 and 150 (ranked players) is that after a certain point, you have to be winning a lot of the Challenger (ATP second-tier) events,” Bhambri said. “The structure is such that the majority of the ranking points are given to the winners and runners-up. So the guys who have broken through (the top 100) would have done so by winning 2-3 tournaments a year.”

The consistency grind

The promising Nagal’s two Challenger titles so far have been spread out between 2017 and 2019. Ramkumar, armed with an attractive serve-and-volley game, finally won his maiden Challenger title in Bahrain in November after losing six finals prior to that. Prajnesh won two Challenger crowns in 2018 to go with another couple of runners-up finishes, a run that propelled him into the top-100 in February 2019 from being 260th before his maiden title in April 2018. Prajnesh entered the singles main draw in the four Grand Slams of 2019, losing the first round in all. Unable to make deep runs in the ATP tournaments and Slams and with victories drying up at the Challenger level, he dropped back to three-digit spots in the same season.

Also read: Part II – The state of Indian tennis: Nowhere to play, no one to teach

Bhambri could relate. He was twice in the top-100 himself, first in 2015-16 and then in 2018, but both landmarks were followed by injury breaks that meant he couldn’t play enough to maintain his rankings. He seconds the notion that staying in the top-100 is a lot tougher than getting into it, for there’s a sizeable step up in physical, mental and skill level that not every player is cut out for.

“First, you’re trying to get to that level by competing and winning in Challengers. Once you’re there, you’re suddenly playing first rounds in ATP events and Slams against the top-100 players. And you have to be beating them. So a lot of them get filtered out there, where if you’re not able to sustain that level, you’re falling back down in the order and going back to the Challenger level. For some it might be that; for me it was injuries,” he said.

Stuck in a rut

India’s current crop, having shown sporadic glimpses of that level, appears to be stuck in this cycle.

Nagal, 24, has made some loud noises—taking a set off Roger Federer at the 2019 US Open, winning the first round of the same Slam the next year, beating a top-50 player this year—but has been unable to string together a steady tune of performances. The 27-year-old Ramkumar, India’s No. 1 in singles now after ending his over decade-long Challenger title wait, has beaten the likes of Dominic Thiem but is yet to find another gear to go that one step higher despite having the wheels in his game. At 32, one wonders if Prajnesh has hit the peak of his injury-hit career. Bhambri himself is making another comeback from a long injury lay-off at 29 in his quest to play his best tennis again.

Result? No Indian singles player earning a place in the Grand Slam main draw in 2021 except for a wildcard entry to Nagal in Australia. No Indian flag in the singles top-100 chart for two years and counting. No one close.