Game and set in Chennai

The city is fast emerging as the tennis capital of India

Chennai's tryst with sports continues. The city saw the dethroning of Viswanathan Anand as the world chess champion by a young Norwegian last month. This month, it will see some world class tennis players converging on the metro for South Asia's only Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) World Tour, the Chennai Open, scheduled between December 30, 2013 and January 5, 2014.

Since 1996, the tournament has attracted some of the best names in tennis, including Rafael Nadal, Boris Becker, Carlos Moya, Richard Krajicek, Patrick Rafter, Yevgeny Kafelnikov, Byron Black and India's own Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi.

And it is just as well that Chennai has been their host. After all, the metro is known as the capital of tennis in India, just as Hyderabad has a reputation as the country's top badminton city.

The first tennis courts in Tamil Nadu's capital were laid in 1883 at the Madras Cricket Club (MCC), a mere six years after the first Wimbledon Championships in 1877. Not long after, in 1887, the first tennis tournament in South India was organised at MCC, which also included a ladies' event, a significant development at the time.

Several renowned tennis players call Chennai home, of them the biggest being the families of the Krishnans and the Amritrajs. Others include T B Balagopal, C Ramaswami, S Vishnu Mohan, Rabi Venkatesan and V K Parthasarathy. Ramanathan Krishnan and son Ramesh Krishnan put the country on the world map of the sport with their exploits, with the older Krishnan reaching the semi-finals of Wimbledon. And who can forget the court dominance of Vijay Amritraj, Anand Amritraj and Ashok Amritraj in the 1970s and early '80s? "There was a stage, I think in the late '60s or early '70s, when all the four members of the Indian Davis Cup team were from Tamil Nadu," recalls N C Sarabeswaran, vice-president, Mylapore Club, and trustee, Mylapore Sports Trust.

Around 4,000 people train regularly in the city at various coaching centres. The Tamil Nadu Tennis Association, or TNTA, always looks out for talent at these schools and it supports promising players, as it did in the case of Ramkumar Ramanathan. The lad, not yet 15 then, won the Adidas National Junior Tennis championship in 2010. "We spotted the talent in him and the association decided to sponsor his stay outside the country for practice and play. He has improved his international ranking, which today is around 700. We hope he will improve on that," says CBN Reddy, honorary secretary, TNTA.

It was in Chennai that the concept of a specialised academy to train tennis players surfaced when the Amritraj family established the Britannia-Amritraj Tennis Academy (BAT). This venerated institution paved the way for the setting up of other training centres in the city, including the one run by Ramesh Krishnan. BAT was also the stereotype for all the tennis coaching centres that mushroomed across the country in the wake of the success of Ramesh Krishnan and the Amritrajs on the international circuit.

"Parents are ready to let their kids take to tennis as a profession," says Rupa Kaushik, a coach of 20 years' standing. At her tennis centre, she trains around 50 youngsters in the age group of six to 14.

Tennis has, fortunately enough, got the backing of corporations in the city. While the major funds are reserved for sponsoring the $450,000 Chennai Open, the main sponsors of the sports event being Aircel, Murugappa Group and some public sector companies, many others associate themselves with other tennis activities. The government too has chipped in with funds, giving Rs 4.5 crore for the upgrade of the tennis stadium at Nugambakkam besides Rs 2 lakh for the Chennai Open.