21 year old Akanksha Nitture from Maharashtra has had a fruitful three weeks – starting with the Fenesta Nationals Doubles title, ITF W15 Mysuru singles quarter-final and doubles final, and ITF W15 Bengaluru singles and doubles finals. She caught up with Deepthi Indukuri after her run in Bengaluru –
Q) How did you get here? What’s your journey been like this week? This was your first final in singles
Nitture – Yeah, it was my first singles ITF finals. Pretty good wins all over the week. I won’t say I didn’t have chances today because I started pretty well.
It was a close first set. I felt I was a little tired from previous days because I played doubles and singles and she (Tanisha Kashyap) only played singles. She had less hours on the court and I had like doubles three matches the day before and then yesterday we had to wait so much because of the rains.
So I think that kind of made a difference because it went on to third set. But I mean overall this week I had some good wins.
Q) What was the win yesterday like against Vaishnavi (Adkar)?
Nitture – She has been doing well recently, performing well. We have played a lot of times in juniors because we are from the same state. It has always been like that – sometimes I win, sometimes she wins. So it was a good win yesterday.
She played well as well but I think my serves were pretty strong yesterday and physically also I was a little better yesterday. So yeah that kind of helped.
Q) What is it like to have your coach travelling by your side. What is his name?
Nitture – It is very helpful because we have been travelling now for three weeks together – Fenesta Nationals, then Mysore and then this. So yeah, he is there to support and tell us the tricks and everything. Also, coaching is allowed now in ITF, so that also helps a lot. His name is Andres.
We won Fenesta doubles, you know, and then Mysore I made quarters in singles and doubles runner-up and here again two runner-ups. Looking for the winner’s trophy next time. Hopefully it’s not too far away.
Q) What’s next for you now?
Nitture – Now I’ll be training for one month because I have been playing a lot of tournaments recently. After this, I’ll play the Indian ITF’s again in December.
Q) And what’s the goal for this year early next year?
Nitture – I feel pretty strong right now after this week. So few things to work on physically as well. Hoping to do well in the W25’s that we have in December.
Q) If there is something that you’d really take home this week, what would that be?
Nitture – It’s not easy to play three matches in the game for example today. Yeah, I mean physically I was strong, I think mentally could have been a little more stronger because even if the body is tired, you can still kind of manipulate yourself with mental strength. But it was tough for my body as well to take so much load but we’ll try to work harder, because we don’t know when it’ll rain in India so we’ll have to be prepared for that for next time.
Q) What’s it like to partner Soha (Sadiq)?
Nitture – We have had a good year. We played the whole year together. We played 4 finals. We are looking to win one now for sure (laughs). We train together at PBI, so we have the same coach as well.