Tamil Nadu Tennis Association (TNTA) Vijay Amritraj held a press conference during the ATP Chennai Open Challenger. Our Legend shared his thoughts on
- Importance of retired players giving it back to Indian Tennis
- On the rise of Maaya Revathi and Rethin Pranav from Tamil Nadu
- On his efforts to get ATP / WTA Tour events back to India
The press conference transcript is below
On retired players contributing to the Indian Tennis
Vijay Amritraj: No, that’s a good point. That’s a good point. But when a person like Prajnesh, Somdev, and all of them retire and they’re still very young, [it’s the] perfect age for them to be able to pass that on. See where they faltered, to be able to actually get even higher than that, you know, that’s the goal. And today’s environment is such that everything is available in the global sense, not just in the local sense.
So there are lots of camps, numerous camps in the Middle East, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi. There are numerous camps in Southeast Asia, in Thailand. And these are all pros who come in the wintertime from Europe to come and work in camps there. There’s a huge camp in Kenya, the Germans run a camp there. So there are enough places to actually go and do [training]. Singapore also. You don’t have to go all the way to Florida or Barcelona or wherever else.
When you get to a certain stage, yes, you have to have a better, more modern version of what’s required. I understand that, you know, someone like me comes from the old school who can teach about mental strength and mental toughness. But we might not be able to help in today’s environment of how to strike the ball. Right. So there’s a lot that they could… But we can talk about what… The one thing that has never changed in tennis is how a player is going to feel at 4-5, 30-40. You know, the way we felt at 4-5, 30-40, the way they feel at 4-5, 30-40 is pretty much the same. So at least I know what the thought process is going through. But how they played the ball today, the court surface [is] different, the ball is heavier, rackets are different. Everything else, who you’re playing against, all makes it much more [of] today’s version of it.
So, yeah, so you need good help in that direction. Plus, of course, the diet, the regimen, the training regimen, the physical fitness, and all of that, all of that needs to come into play. And I think we’ve created some of it here in Tamil Nadu, especially. But you have to reach a certain standard to get there. You know, when you start at 8, 9 years old, you don’t need that. You need to get to a certain point, frankly speaking, to get into a challenger tournament, you should be able to do most of it here, right?
I’m an eternal optimist. Okay. You’re going to throw the ball up to serve. I always think it’s going to go in, but then you may miss it by two feet. Right. So I keep telling our boys that you get a wild card into a tournament once, twice. Okay. But thereafter you should have made a jump to actually get in straight. So Sumit didn’t play here. He would have been the only guy who would have got in, I think so. Right. He would have only been the guy to get straight into the tournament and he didn’t play.
But you know, you cannot but force yourself to get better however you do it. You have to get better to come back here and not just play this tournament, but to win it. That’s the goal.
What am I looking forward to seeing? My Indian boys playing. My first choice is to always give it to the Indians. Right. Because that’s why we have these tournaments here so that the guys can get better for the next year. But by the next year, if you’re not getting in this year, by the next year you should get in. So many of the foreign players who have come and played here have gotten so good. You know, some name, the guy comes here, he’s playing in the qualifier and loses in the second round. Next thing you know, [he’s] in the fourth round of the Australian Open. Today everything is universal. So there’s no saying, you know, he has this or he has that. You have everything now. Everything is available. We literally have to get better. Because frankly speaking, the day I went to the Davis Cup match in Delhi for a couple of days and we’re playing Togo… Lovely boys in Togo. But do we belong in the same group as Togo, frankly, in Group 2?
We are playing to stay in Group 1. My point is that unless we have players in the top 50, we’re not going to have any crack at getting into the world group. We can continue and continue and continue to stay between one and two and so on and so forth. Right? So that’s my whole point. I mean, we have to stay so focused on the four singles. You know, if you get old and you want to play doubles, that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with it because you, you can, you can make a decent living out of it, stay in the circuit for a while and so on, so forth. But unless we have four singles covered, how are we going to make the world group? That’s my, that is my only question, only focus. Listen, if each person is different, every individual is different. That’s what’s so great about this sport. I played differently, my brother played differently, Ramesh played differently, the great Krishnan played differently. We all played [at] different times. Different times and we did what we could do best. You get to a point where first and foremost thing in our sport is you hate to lose. And it’s only you. Nobody else can help you. It’s only you, right? So if you lose one year, you want to make sure that you’re coming back better next year. However you do it, whatever is good for you. Is it good for you to play three weeks and take two weeks off or play five weeks in a row? Are you going to practice four hours a day or you play two hours a day and spend the rest of the time in the gym? Whatever is good for each individual. Boy, girl, it doesn’t matter, right? So based on that individual, you have to decide with your own mindset, the own way you play. Oh, you know what? My backhand needs improvement. I’m not getting any attacking capability with my backhand. Okay, well then three months, I better focus on my backhand. Way back in the old days, Mats Wilander didn’t have a backhand slice, and so he went off in six months, he practiced [his] backhand slice to come back. And six months he practiced 200 backhands. And the following year he won three Grand Slams. My point is that each individual needs to figure out what he or she needs to do and absolutely work like there’s no tomorrow to be able to get it done. And I think, could we increase more opportunities? Yes, but do we have opportunities now that we never had before? Yes. And there’s a lot more on offer today for boys and girls than we could ever imagine, you know, and if we have tournaments around on the home soil, you must be good enough to win it.
(The interviewer shifts the topic to wild cards and Maaya’s performance.)
Harini Raman: On the topic of wild cards and India’s performances, what are your thoughts on Maaya? She got a wild card entry into the qualifying at [the] Mumbai Open, and she’s now into the semifinals this evening.
Vijay Amritraj: Right. She plays today. Yeah. Now, see, to me, that’s what energizes me. And frankly, we don’t expect everybody to do that. We get it. But to see one, two, three successes makes everything we do worthwhile. Okay, so that’s my whole point. And the great thing about today’s sports, men and women, I mean girls and boys and ladies, men, is the fact that the ROI on your practice is so high. How could you not want to be in the top 20, top 30, top 40, because you’re set for life. Which means if you’ve already chosen this as your profession, this needs to be the complete focus for you. The government has been incredibly supportive of us, of what TNTA is doing and what they want to do with sports. And every time somebody wins something, [the] boss wants to see them to congratulate them, which is awesome. So it’s just the government is being so supportive. You know, we are trying to do whatever we can at TNTA to, you know, provide whatever they want. We try to help. I think the rest is left to the player. We can only take you off to the water.
Interviewer: As the Tamil Nadu Tennis Association president, any insights into your interactions with Maaya Revathi, who reached the WTA Mumbai Open semis this week?
Vijay Amritraj: Well, I only spoke to her before she went on the tour. You know, in my last trip here, she went to the Delhi Fenesta Nationals, I think it was before the Nationals. Interviewer: Before the Nationals? Yeah, Nationals. And then lost the finals. Yeah, I was there. Then this boy, Rethin Pranav, won it. And so we were very pleased with the results of what they got there.
When you lose a match, you have to ascertain where it went wrong and at what point the third set didn’t work, or were you not physically well enough? It was, you know, a witness question. Were you opposite in a break and you did close it out? What happened? Those kinds of things, you know, you have to analyze, but not right after the match. You know, you have to take a breather and make sure the next day you can analyze it. But it seems like they’re doing well. Rethin Pranav, unfortunately, was injured, and hopefully, he’ll come back. And it would have been great for him to play the qualifying here. It had been fantastic for him to get a qualifying spot, a great experience for him to do it. I want to see how he can be fit enough, 100% fit enough, to be able to play well.
Interviewer: Any update on the ATP or WTA Tour coming to Chennai?
Vijay Amritraj: I was hoping you wouldn’t ask that because that’s the only question I didn’t want you to ask. That’s the main… like you said, your constant talks the last two years. Yeah, two years working my head on it, you know, spend my own money running around here and there trying to chase these fellows.
See, the ATP is revamping their home schedule. Okay, so 2026. They have come out with a calendar. There are two open weeks, there are two TBDs in the calendar. I don’t know if you’ve seen it. Okay, there are two TBDs in the calendar, one in the summer and one in the fall. And so I had gone after the fall event eight, nine months ago. That’s the Moscow event that’s now become a TBD for obvious reasons. And what did they do two years ago? They put that event in Tel Aviv because Moscow couldn’t have it because of Ukraine. Right. So they put it in Tel Aviv. What happened in Israel? They took it out of Israel two weeks before all of this happened, right? Stuck it for one year in Sofia. And I’m sitting here saying, hey, you know, give me the event. The problem is that it’s a winter tournament and it’s here in November. So we also have our windows of December, January, February, if we can do it, or potentially two weeks in September after the US Open.
So our windows also are a little narrow on when we can afford to have it, you know, so that’s been the dilemma here for them. I think they’re trying to… They’re trying to add one more ATP 1000 to the calendar, you know, which is likely to go to Jeddah. And you know, they took out three ATP 250s already. No, ATP Newport went to… They bought it for quite a large sum of money and they made it a 500 in Doha, and then Cordoba went to Munich, and then one more went somewhere in Europe again.
So they took out three 250s already. So I’m saying give me, don’t even give me the tournament permanently. You know, just give me a license to run the tournament so we, you can see what we do again. It’s been a while since we had it here, so they’re still putting me on a hurry up and hold. So that’s where we are. Honestly. That’s as of… As of yesterday, as a matter of fact.
And the government is just being incredibly supportive. So it’s… I have taken everything to the kitchen sink out on the ATP because it’s their job to give us an event whether they like it or not. Because the ATP and WTA need to have events in India. It is by far the fastest-growing economy in the world. There is no tournament in India. We need a tournament in India. If you want to be a global sport, you need to have an event in India. When I was playing in the ’70s and ’80s, we had tournaments across all capitals in Asia. Every capital in Asia had a tournament. On top of everything else, Nairobi wants a tournament. Muscat wants a tournament. Cairo wants a tournament. India wants… India can have two or three tournaments. Bangkok wants a tournament back. Manila wants to turn. Singapore wants a tournament. Hong Kong wants a tournament. And you’re saying none of this is possible. So I’m, I’m being very vocal with these guys about, you know, doing this, and they say [they] can only have three [tournaments] during the same week. So why can’t we have four if it’s not on the same continent? So I will keep at it