In an insightful episode of Duologue, veteran media leader Barun Das sits down with Indian tennis royalty, Vijay Amritraj, to unpack a career built entirely on defying the odds. Moving seamlessly from his sickly childhood to the historic 1987 Davis Cup, the legendary sportsman opens up about the fine line between talent and hard work, the legacy of his Britannia Amritraj Tennis (BAT) academy, and his steadfast refusal to trade his Indian citizenship for an American passport.

“No Guts, No Glory”: Vijay Amritraj on Defying the Odds, Rebuilding Indian Tennis, and Keeping the Tricolor in His Soul

Introduction In an insightful episode of Duologue, veteran media leader Barun Das sits down with Indian tennis royalty, Vijay Amritraj, to unpack a career built entirely on defying the odds. Moving seamlessly from his sickly childhood to the historic 1987 Davis Cup, the legendary sportsman opens up about the fine line between talent and hard work, the legacy of his Britannia Amritraj Tennis (BAT) academy, and his steadfast refusal to trade his Indian citizenship for an American passport.

Detailed Interview Transcript

Barun Das: Sir, Mr. Vijay Amritraj, welcome to Duologue. Your performance and journey almost mirrored that of India in those days. You have excelled and represented our country with distinction, not only in sports but beyond the court—diplomacy, if you talk about humanitarian initiatives, or even culture. But above all, sir, I believe that you define a concept called “against all odds.” You seem to be a destiny’s child. The way you were born, your childhood health—anybody who suffered that kind of a condition where you were constantly in and out of the hospital, sports—tennis—wouldn’t be included in the top four, which requires strength, stamina, endurance, power (both mental and physical). And you did that. So, did it happen, or you made it happen?

Vijay Amritraj: Thank you for that wonderful introduction, Barun. Very nice to see you. And, uh, if you say ‘Sir,’ then I look for my father, you know, so please call me Vijay.

Barun Das: Vijay with a V, Barun with a B.

Vijay Amritraj: Okay, there you go. There you go. It’s lovely to meet you, Barun. Thank you very much for having me on your show. This is, uh, very exciting for me as well. It’s a… it’s a long story, it’s a long journey, but, um, more than anything else, for me, sport has been my education. You know, it has taught me more than I could have possibly imagined in doing anything else. And, uh, I never would have… I never would have thought that when I started out, because as you rightly said, I started out sport because of health. I was in and out of the hospital quite a bit, but eventually the doctor said, you know, “This guy needs to play an outdoor sport,” because it had to do with my lungs. So the lungs couldn’t perform more than 25-30% capacity, so they ended up saying, “Listen, play something outdoors, get the lungs moving, and then you’ll be able to go to school.” But otherwise, even to this day, even at my age today, if I have any problem with myself, I’d go out and play tennis.

Barun Das: I think sports is a panacea for almost all the problems that we see around us. I mean, sports is the ultimate solution. You know, there are two things. Let me ask you that, do you think this list is exhaustive to become a world champion? That you need talent and temperament. Do you need anything else, or these two, by and large, form the exhaustive list of qualities?

Vijay Amritraj: Well, yes and no. I mean, you need a… you need a bit of everything. But at the end of the day, the first and foremost is an overwhelming desire to win.

Barun Das: That’s part of temperament?

Vijay Amritraj: Uh, again, yes and no. Temperament comes in at a later point. If you have an overwhelming desire to win, then you must have the overwhelming necessity to work to match that desire. If you don’t put in that work, then you’re not going to be able to get where you want to get to. The second thing is that if you have talent, uh, you can get away with less work. But you still have to put in the work. But if you don’t have talent, work can actually overcome the lack of talent.

Barun Das: Oh, wow.

Vijay Amritraj: So if you overdo the work, you can actually overcome the lack of talent, but not the other way around.

Barun Das: Right. You talk about the desire to win. You come across as a very ultimate gentleman, a statesman. And a lot of people, if I remember it correctly, Fred Perry has commented after you lost in your quarterfinal with Jimmy Connors in 1981, and he ascribed the single reason for your loss is that the lack of “killer punch” in you. And I think Arthur Ashe also had said the same thing. He said that he is known… it’s a history of losing from winning. But as you are saying that you had an ultimate desire to win, so where did it… and not only that, I mean, I also know 1973, while you lost in Wimbledon, after that you went and played Volvo International where you have won eight match points against including Rod Laver and Bjorn Borg. So you are both in one.

Vijay Amritraj: So coming back to that, it’s very hard for me to listen to that, because it makes it… what’s the word to use, you know? Just because you don’t argue on calls, uh, doesn’t make it, make you any worse. Okay? Borg won his matches in certain ways, McEnroe won in certain ways, Connors won in certain ways, and I won in certain ways. But I think if you look back at the history of Asian tennis, at the end of the day, to this day, I have won more tour titles than any other Asian.

Barun Das: Yes, 405 if I recall…

Vijay Amritraj: Yeah, but no, title… titles is just…

Barun Das: Titles… number of matches I think 405, that is an Asian record.

Vijay Amritraj: Also, but if you look at the number of tour titles, when someone wins over a period of his career, uh, the next person is only at 12, um, was… is a Japanese player, Kei Nishikori. So I think when you look at… look at, uh, the desire to win, I think it was very much there. The question is, do you win the majors against the top players? Like the Borgs, the McEnroes, and Connors, who were the top players of my generation? Because I’d beaten them before and I’d beaten them after, but I didn’t beat them there. Though I did beat Borg at the US Open, but I lost to him at Wimbledon. Yeah. So, you know, it’s a mix and match. But then I always say, “Well, that’s looking at the cup half empty.” Yeah. I look at the cup half full.

Barun Das: Half full, always. The gamesmanship and sportsmanship. My understanding of sportsmanship is playing with spirit and ethics. And gamesmanship is where you’re leveraging the margins of the rule. Like, for instance, I think it was… was it Rod Laver who was playing against you in the US Open five-setter which you won, and he started wearing spikes? He took the spike. You didn’t have the spike. So I… I don’t know if a larger-than-life figure at that point in time, he was so keen to win that he even went on to wear those spikes where you never had the spikes, you didn’t even know about the spikes. So it’s a difference between sportsmanship and gamesmanship.

Vijay Amritraj: Well, let me put it this way: He was such a pro, and arguably the world’s greatest player ever. And, uh, to play him on the center court at the US Open, after having beaten him at the Volvo event in New Hampshire, uh, was a special moment because, you know, I didn’t want people to also think that that was, you know, a fluke the first time around. So this was the second time around, and it started to drizzle. So when it started to drizzle and the court started to get wet—it’s a clay court—no, it was a hard court, grass court. It was grass.

Barun Das: Grass court.

Vijay Amritraj: It was grass. So you needed, you needed some more traction. And he happened to have it. He happened to have spikes in his bag. And so when the referee came out and said, uh, “Hey kid, you can wear spikes too if you want.” You know, obviously I didn’t have any spikes with me, and I started to use my handkerchief to wipe the bottom of my feet during the course of the match.

Barun Das: Unbelievable. Incredible.

Vijay Amritraj: And… as it showed later on, I ended up winning in five sets.

Barun Das: Does… does fortune favor the brave?

Vijay Amritraj: By a long shot. By a long shot. No guts, no glory, no pain, no gain. You just have to go after it and… and play big on the big points. People are not going to remember you by the losses; they’re going to remember you by the wins.

Barun Das: By the wins. Yeah. Vijay, was it different for you while playing in the circuit, ATP tournaments, and playing in Davis Cup? Did your mind work differently? The approach to it was different?

Vijay Amritraj: I think the most important thing for me, growing up, and playing the first year on Davis Cup, and what it took for 20 years, and then on the tour, playing… the main thing was, was how the Indians felt when they watched my matches. In any part of the world. And this is the second most global sport after FIFA. And so when I look at the way they felt after I won, and the way they felt after I lost… you couldn’t but believe in the tricolor and the flag. The flag and the anthem. That’s all that matters. And that’s why it made such a big difference in Davis Cup.

Barun Das: You know, the way you started, the way you showed the way to us, uh, and then from there to some extent the baton was picked up by Paes. And Paes is the product of BAT, right? Britannia Amritraj Tennis program. After you, one would have expected that we would explode, because you did it from nowhere, no backing, no technology, all by yourself and driven by the spirit of your parents, if I may so.

Vijay Amritraj: Exactly. Exactly.

Barun Das: So from there, what happened? How did we lose out the…?

Vijay Amritraj: Good question. I think the most important thing here is first the belief in the fact that we can do it. And I think, uh, from a cultural aspect to a great extent, we hesitate because there is no guarantee in sport. That’s one issue. Though that has changed over the 40 years ago since when I was… I was playing, and so on. I think that mental aspect is starting to move a little bit more. Today, no one… no one asks a cricketer what you do for a living.

Barun Das: Yeah.

Vijay Amritraj: Right? When I was starting to… when I was playing tennis on the tour, people would say to me, “Yes, you play tennis, but what do you do for a living?”

Barun Das: Right.

Vijay Amritraj: You know, till I won my first big tournament, and then nobody asked me that question. So I think when we look at it, we have to, uh, add the element of risk into it and say, you know, “What are you looking for here?” But I want to… I want to, uh, kind of let the kids know, and the families know, that one of the best ways to get a good education and go to a good school and a good college anywhere in the world is if you play a sport well.

Barun Das: That is true. That is absolutely true. And, uh, correct me if I’m wrong, Vijay, that I think there are three I’s that we need. That intent, investment, influence. I’m sure sometime I get confused that whether we as a country have that intent or not. Like for instance, um, if I recall that none of the budget speeches ever had mentioned about the money being allocated to sports and development of sports. I don’t recall, maybe that had happened.

Vijay Amritraj: Because what are we good at, and what we are used to doing, and what we are comfortable with, is what we end up doing. Right? Sport is not there yet as a comfort… as a comfort level, because there is no guarantee. And if you don’t make it, what do you do? That’s the big issue. So irrespective of what sport it might be. That’s why I think cricket has done a superb job with what they have, irrespective of whether you look at… whether it’s political, whether it’s, uh, scientific, whether coaching, whatever it may be. But they’ve got a good, good fee… feeder system where from the under-18s, the juniors, the rural areas, that they’re able to pick up, because that… the country is very wealthy in cricket. And so you’re able to go down the list all the way with no support from any, any state or federal government.

Barun Das: Right, so cricket has built that pipeline from the school to the champions’ leaderboard. But then again, if you see around that time, before our World Cup win in 1983, cricket was also not there.

Vijay Amritraj: Mm-hmm.

Barun Das: I feel tennis, besides all other sports, has a little special significance. If we talk about imagery or the soft power that you can… that can accrue to a country, tennis has that. You know, it’s a sport which is played usually by the upper echelon of the society. You talk about Wimbledon Center Court…

Vijay Amritraj: Yeah.

Barun Das: …or US Center Court, the spectators are equally important almost in terms of their fame and familiarity as much as the players who are playing. So in India’s interest, if India can parallelly replicate its success in cricket in tennis, that would do a lot of good to India. And I feel that that’s the reason, uh, legends like you, um, I think we still look up to you. Is there something that can be done? There are… there are impediments, there are hindrances, there are blocks, but can we not… look at it.

Vijay Amritraj: So it ends up being a Catch-22 if you go down that path, and I think the most important thing of course you start… let’s start with investment for a minute that you talked about. And let’s say you can have a Commissioner of Sport, and the Commissioner of Sport runs after the investment. And so you decide, “I’m going to get X amount of, um, money into… into this sport.” Or for that matter, let’s pick 10 sports in the country and say, “These are the 10 sports we have a good chance of winning medals in at potentially the Olympics in 2036,” and see what happens. And so we go after all this funding that might be required for 10 or 12 sports that we think we can win medals in. Because we can’t be good at everything. Okay? So that’s the first thing. Secondly, you hire excellence people in each of these 10 or 12 disciplines, and let them run that discipline independently. It’s very difficult in India for associations to create champions. That’s not what they are meant to do.

Barun Das: Yeah.

Vijay Amritraj: They are meant to grassroots the game. So more people need to play the game.

Barun Das: Democratize the game.

Vijay Amritraj: Yes, have more people, more kids playing, more parents playing. You know, there are three reasons you play the sport anyway. One is to… one is for exercise, two is for, uh, competition domestically, and then we leave out the third one. If we go globally, then the equation completely changes. So leave that out for the minute and work after the first two. So I think that’s where we go with associations. We don’t expect the federal government, they’ve got so many things that they can spend their money on, and not necessarily a sport, because at the… if you look at every other country in the world, barring a few, they come from private sponsorships, private investment that goes into a sport. And the private investment goes into a sport only when they have already excelled. Not prior to that. So…

Barun Das: Oh, chicken and egg.

Vijay Amritraj: That’s right. That’s why I said it’s a Catch-22. So that… that’s why it’s very hard to say, “Hey, you know, let’s just go and put in X number of crores into this particular sport and see what happens.” You know, that’s the hard part. That’s why I think the CSR initiative is a very good one.

Barun Das: Yeah, corporate. And also I sometimes feel, I don’t think there will be many takers, the BCCI is a rich body, one of the richest bodies in the world.

Vijay Amritraj: Yes.

Barun Das: Um, I think if they can be a little more lenient to look at other sports as well, development of other sports, what would they do… I think last year they made about 3,000 crore profit. What would they do with it?

Vijay Amritraj: Awesome. Awesome. I think across the country we have a variety of, uh, variety of talent in different walks of life. There is no lack of talent. The talent is huge in this country across the board. I think we certainly need to go more and more into the rural areas.

Barun Das: And what about your, uh, documentary on your life? Time Studios have signed you? 2024?

Vijay Amritraj: So it’s a work in progress. Hopefully it’ll be a… hopefully it’ll be out by the end of this year.

Barun Das: The director is one of the award-winning directors, no?

Vijay Amritraj: Yes, he did the St. Louis Superman, and, uh, you know, a terrific guy, he’s a Canadian Indian. Uh, and, uh, what a talent, you know. And I think, uh, when you look at all these guys, the way they are able to piece these things together, uh, documentaries are very, very hard to make. And making it engrossing is even harder. I mean, you can make a documentary which nobody would watch.

Barun Das: Yeah. Uh, so coming back again on this Leander Paes and Bhupathi, uh, obviously I don’t think there is a comparison between what you are as a legend and what Paes is. Paes possibly would be considered, if not… not only India’s best doubles player, maybe one of the world’s best doubles players of all time. And your breaking into the top 20, number 18 rank, which is like a distant dream for all of us for the last 50 years. And then after that we have seen a bit of Sania Mirza, and then it’s a complete lull. Uh, so did it ever happen that you all came together and tried to, uh, look at Indian tennis and work together towards development of Indian tennis?

Vijay Amritraj: When we started, when I started the… the tennis program, the Britannia Amritraj Tennis program, in 1985, and we picked, uh, the first eight boys across the country from different parts…

Barun Das: You were there in the selection?

Vijay Amritraj: Uh, I did the selection.

Barun Das: You did the selection?

Vijay Amritraj: Only I. And my brother Anand. And it was done professionally, it was done for a reason, it was only the only reason to have that program was to create excellence. It was not a free program for just for the sake of charity, it was not meant to promote the game, it was not meant to hit grassroots tennis, it was to produce someone who can follow in the Davis Cup team. That was the reason to do it. And the kids we picked were in the age bracket of 11, 12, 13, in that age group. So we had, uh, Leander from Calcutta, we had, uh, Anirban Baruah from Guwahati, we had, uh, KP Balaraj from, from Chennai and Bangalore, we had Rohit Rajpal from Delhi. We had a whole bunch of kids, and then their guarantee was only to keep them for a year. If they didn’t improve at a rate that we thought they were supposed to improve, we moved on to another one.

Barun Das: Oh.

Vijay Amritraj: That was it. It was meant for a reason. You got a scholarship so to speak for a… for one year. Everything was given, your education, your books, your, your travel, your coaching, your, everything was given, and they lived with us. We had a special home for them. And we had my mother tasted every meal before they ate it, to make sure this was what they should be eating. My mother did homework with these kids for school. My mother dealt with every part of each person’s religion. Eight of them came in the first batch.

Barun Das: That’s right. So your mother then had 11 kids at that point in time! Three of you and…

Vijay Amritraj: Well, we were, we were already done! We were already done. Yeah. So I think, I… I said if she couldn’t run that program from that perspective, I was not going to do it. And that was very important.

Barun Das: So it tasted success. I mean, one of the best things that happened…

Vijay Amritraj: Oh yeah, yeah, three Asian Junior Champions and one Wimbledon Junior Champion. So that came, that means it can be done. But I hope that that program would generate more programs around the country with other youngsters who came after me.

Barun Das: But that didn’t happen.

Vijay Amritraj: That didn’t happen.

Barun Das: Uh, now this is something I wanted to bounce off with you. I got to know, I think Roger Federer would have been, uh, the national team soccer player if he hadn’t played, uh, tennis. Um, I think the legs are very important, right? If your mind can control legs, the rest of the limbs are easier to be controlled. And, uh, even if it’s racquet sports like tennis which we tend to think that we need a lot of power to hit the ball, uh, but to reach the ball…

Vijay Amritraj: When I was growing up, I was the tallest guy along with Stan Smith on the tour. We were… I was one of the tallest people that ever played the game. Today, it’s the average height on the tour.

Barun Das: Yeah.

Vijay Amritraj: It’s the average height. At 6’4″. Alcaraz is one of the shorter players.

Barun Das: Also…

Vijay Amritraj: So I think when you… when you look at it, all our boys now, uh, and our girls for that matter in tennis, are… are much taller, very athletic, they put in a lot of… a lot of time in the gym, they… they’re training the way they’re training today needs to be done. So I think we have all that now. We don’t have to go looking for it elsewhere.

Barun Das: I have heard Paes saying that he wasn’t that good in the trial, his… he’s one of his friends who apparently was a better tennis player, his classmate, but yet he was recruited for the…

Vijay Amritraj: Yes. And as you rightly said, we went after the legs.

Barun Das: You went after the legs?

Vijay Amritraj: After the legs. Wow. Leander had spectacular legs. Awesome legs. His, uh, his tennis issue was not… not an issue because that we could teach. That we could teach. So we had two foreign coaches with us, who lived with us here as well. And so I said, “Listen, don’t worry about the tennis. The legs is what we’re going to go after, because we need a good athlete to play this game.”

Barun Das: Plus, plus you need to reach the ball. Even if you’re five inches shorter, but if you reach the ball faster, you’re there.

Vijay Amritraj: Yeah, so that, that’s what it is. Okay, I have to go back and tell him. He’s still wondering!

Barun Das: Absolutely. No, no, absolutely. He was a terrific athlete. That’s why he was so quick at the net, we saw all that, you know. You can fix a lot of the technical aspects of it. Natural ability, it’s hard to teach, you know. So, um… so then others didn’t take it up, from there where you started, you were the beacon, you showed them the way, but then that got fizzled out. Uh, but can’t we get all of them together, what it… it would take a Vijay Amritraj to lead the way again so that India looks back again. And, uh… it’s worrying, you see, the… the kind of players that we have in the world circuit, it’s worrying. From where you were, from where Leander and Bhupathi and Sania Mirza have, uh, kept the flag flying high, from there, nowhere we are.

Vijay Amritraj: We don’t have anyone actually playing the Grand Slams on a regular basis today. Just playing. Just playing. Just getting into it.

Barun Das: So can’t we get back there? Can’t we look at this? I mean, what would require a Vijay Amritraj to lead the way again, which he did 50 years back by playing himself?

Vijay Amritraj: So, I played Davis Cup for nearly 20 years. I served my country when it… when I was good enough to do it. Post my career, we ran the… the Britannia Amritraj Tennis program for 15 years. Something that we created, which was one of its kind from all of this part of the world. No sport had it. The MRF Pace Foundation started on the basis of our program. They learned it from us. And so when you look back at it, I said, “Okay, you know, we did that for 20 years on the tour, then I did this for 15 years.” So my time is done. Tennis has also moved on. You’ve got to get further kids who can come and actually run it, like Leander, like Mahesh, like Bopanna, like Sania, like all of them who came after us, and they’ve also retired from their game, so they are in a good position to actually have a younger view at what… what’s happening today. And that’s an important factor. You gotta go with the times.

Barun Das: No, you are… you are… we are still looking at you, because, you know, you are an Indian, right? You’re still an Indian, after 40 years.

Vijay Amritraj: Absolutely.

Barun Das: What is the reason that you haven’t taken that citizenship of the…

Vijay Amritraj: Because everywhere I played in the world, the flag was flown and the anthem was sung. Anywhere I played, that’s what happened. And it’s always been in my soul.