With Indian tennis not in the best of health at the moment and the heydays of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi a distant memory, Tennis Premier League (TPL), founded by Kunal Thakkur and Mrunal Jain in 2018, hopes to change that.
With the TPL gearing up for its sixth season, co-founder Thakkur emphasised on the long-term vision of the league.
"The Race To Gold scholarship that we have started, the whole idea is to get an Olympic medal for tennis in India. After Leander Paes, nobody has been able to achieve that. Till we have an Olympic medal, the kind of support we will get from the corporates or the government it will be limited. We want to get that kind of support for tennis and for that we need to build champions and icons like Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi, Sania Mirza etc. So what we are trying to do here is we are having a complete program where we will have tournaments all year round and when the year ends we will pick four kids from every city. So we select kids from the smaller cities and bring them to Mumbai or for that matter Delhi. They play a Masters and the best player of that region gets a scholarship."
Thakkur was speaking in the presence of Bollywood actress who will don the mantle of a co-owner as she picked up stakes in the Chennai Smashers.
"This scholarship, ofcourse the entire kitting is for the whole year. More than that it is the whole experience for the kid. When we get this kid for the main game, he will be felicitated live on television. After that he will get an opportunity against the top players and our idea is to connect that junior player to the top player. Imagine a under-10 kid playing a tie-breaker with Rohan Bopanna and building a personal rapport. And for Rohan to mentor him. It's an individual sport, it does get lonely and you need appreciation. So when a parent sees their kid, they will see the kid happy."
Thakkur stressed on the need to support the junior players and not just the known names.
"We support our top players. Sumit Nagal got a lot of support when he said that he only has Rs 70k in his bank account. It's a great thing that happened but my personal opinion is that we don't need to support only the top players, we need to support the juniors as well. We need to support a talented under-18 kid and that is a time he needs the sport,'' he added.
The TPL co-founder revealed that there is a lot of enthusiasm from Tier-II and Tier-III cities for tennis.
"We are getting the same number of entries in places like Anand and Bharuch that we are getting in Mumbai, so Tier-II and Tier-III cities are taking up tennis now."
Chennai Smashers co-owners (L to R) Vipul Bansal, Sonali Bendre and Dharmender Goel |
Sonali Bendre explained her thought behind becoming the co-owner.
"It's an absolute honour to be here. I love the dedication and clear vision of Kunal has. The idea as TPL was to go out there and play. Keep the kids away from video games and go out there and play sports. I feel there is nothing like sports that can instill discipline in children and give them a rhythm and build morals and character. I feel all our children should be doing. Beauty of tennis is that it's got athleticism, it's got strategy. The child is building its hand and eye coordination. There is a strategy to the game."
