Born to Telugu parents from Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad, 18yr old Nishesh is pursuing Data Science at the Stanford University while also being ranked in the ATP 439 on the Pro Tour.

Nishesh, along with Samir Banerjee, is one of the standout talents from the Indian Diaspora. Some of his accomplishments include

– 2022 US Open Junior Doubles Champion
– Former World No. 3 in the ITF Under-18 Junior rankings
– Ranked ATP 439 from playing just 6 Pro Tour events in 2023 during his college break
– Was Ranked No. 2 on the ITA College Tennis Rankings last year

Here are some excerpts from his interview

Brief overview on the background

My name is Nishesh Basavareddy. I’m a sophomore here at Stanford. I’m studying data science and I’m from Carmel, Indiana.

I was born in Irvine, California and my dad just played recreationally over there and I have an older brother Nishanth Basavareddy, who’s about three years older than me. He started playing when he was five or six and I started going to the courts with him when I was like three years old, four
years old and just picked up a racquet.

I played tennis and soccer growing up and then when I moved to Indiana at eight, I chose only tennis. I like the individuality of the sport and I just loved it.

Why did he choose Stanford?

I always wanted to take the college route. When I first started looking at colleges, I looked at a bunch of colleges around the nation and Stanford was always at the top of my list.

Coming to the school, seeing what it was all about, seeing the coaches, the team and everything, I just thought it was the perfect fit for me.

On my visit, I heard just a lot of stories about all the cool people you meet at Stanford. Obviously, to get into Stanford you had to have something special or have an interest that you excelled at. I feel being able to meet those people and being surrounded by those types of people every day just helps you keep improving and work towards whatever your interest is.

I first started talking to Stanford right before my junior year of high school and Paul did a home visit as well to me. I always thought that the Stanford team is a really tight knit family and really care about us on and off the court. I think that’s one of the important things about them.

On his Tennis so far

I’m an all-around player. I like to be an aggressive baseliner. I like my backhand, my forehand and I also like to come into net, finish off points there and just mix up the pace of the rallies.

A couple aspects of my backhand: I can absorb pace well off that side and I can also change direction well and I feel like that makes it tough for opponents to read where I’m going.

I won the US Open Junior Doubles title with Ozan Baris who plays at Michigan State now and it was a great experience.

I played three of the four junior slams that year. Just being at the same facility as the top pros was a really cool experience and then being able to win the title at the end of it was good.

On his College Tennis journey so far

Coming into the fall I didn’t really have any expectations in my freshman year and then I went to Tulsa, I was just enjoying my first college tournament and had a couple of good wins there and I just felt my game was progressing already just in a month at school.

I played a couple more challengers in the fall and I reached my first challenger quarterfinal in Tiburon and then my first final in Fairfield and that moved my ranking up to 450 or so. Now I feel like it just helps me
believe that I can make it up higher one day.

On the Tennis team at Stanford

I think when you have a group of teammates that cares about improving and winning, it just makes it easier when you’re doing hard fitness sessions or hard practices and just seeing other guys work hard as well just makes it easier to keep improving and keep competing every day.

The coaches do a good job of pushing us so I think that’s probably the most beneficial thing of being on a team where normally tennis is an individual sport you’re just grinding out there on your own.

So being a part of a team helps that. I’m looking forward a lot to this dual season. We got a great group of freshmen this year and all of our returners have also improved from last year. We have a real shot of going deep in NCAA. We just have to keep on working hard every day and I hope we can just give ourselves the best opportunity to make it to the final site and have a push at winning the title.