Former ATP World Doubles No. 7 Raven Klaasen has joined the Doubles Dream of India initiative following his retirement from the pro tennis circuit last year. Raven was with the team in Houston and Mahitha Dadireddy (ITD) caught up with him to get his insights into the program so far.
On joining the Doubles Dream of India program
Initially, I took some time off when I stopped playing after the French Open last year, but I always knew that I would get into tennis in some capacity. I’ve been chatting with Rohan since US Open last year and I was just waiting for the right time. I know most of these guys in the program quite well, so it was an exciting opportunity for me and I think I’ve got something to bring to the table that might get them to play better tennis.
On the program so far
This is my fourth week with the guys, and we’ve had some good results. Obviously, it will take time to implement some of the changes that I would like to see, and we’ve had a good week here, a couple of wins, but it’s a long road to get better and improve in tennis, and unfortunately it goes slower than what we would like, but excited with the changes I’ve seen so far. There’s quite a few players in the program, and I’m not getting exposed to all of them at the same time all the time, so the number one thing is to get them to think differently, to be professional and sort of see a bigger picture on where they can be, and if they put the right things in place, what’s possible in this sport.
All of them have strengths and weaknesses, and I’ll be addressing those as time goes by, but the main thing is trying to get their minds professional about moving up the ranking, and you’ve got to tick those boxes every day if you want to compete successfully.
On Balaji and Begemann reaching the semis
Look, in terms of what Bala and Begemann did today, that was a good match by their standards. It unfortunately didn’t go their way, but I don’t think they played a bad match. They played against a team who’s defending champions here, and it’s always going to be difficult. I mean, one of them, Max Purcell, is a Grand Slam champion, also very crafty on the tennis court, so the guys gave themselves a chance to win. Unfortunately, pro tennis goes that way. You can’t win always, and we’ll take something out of this and be better next time.
On Rohan Bopanna`s success
Watching Rohan do what he’s doing at the moment is very impressive. I mean, that’s an understatement.
I’ve chatted to him a little bit, and it’s very rewarding to see someone do that and hang in there long and have this level of success, because it’s an outlier for someone to be playing this well at this age, and it’s good for me. He’s a good friend of mine, and I’m happy for him, and I hope he can extend it as long as possible.
On the schedule coming up
In the immediate future, we’re going to go to Mexico for one Challenger event, and then I get to go home for a little bit of a break, and then we’ll consolidate and see what everybody — There’s a lot of moving parts. The program has about eight or nine players in there, so we’ll figure out the schedules and see where I can be on the road again.