Somewhere in 2019, Rohan Bopanna, the ace Indian tennis player, looked set to hang up his tennis shoes. The reason was lack of cartilage in his knees. So much so that he was taking two to three painkillers a day. He didn’t just overcome it through Iyengar Yoga and good physiotherapy but went on to win his first Men’s Doubles Grand Slam at the age of 43. He also became the oldest first-time No.1 player on the ATP Tour, at an age when most sportspersons would have already walked into retirement life.
Behind the scenes, athletes have their own struggles that we don’t get to see. In the harsh world of tennis, it could be not just about injuries, but also the lack of finances if you are not a top-100 player. There was a time when Bopanna didn’t win a single match for five months on the tour. Sitting on a chair, yours truly can come up with a slew of adjectives to describe his perseverance. Yet, after flipping through hundreds of pages in the dictionary, it is difficult to nail down that one word to aptly describe Rohan Bopanna’s 22-year single-minded focus on the ATP circuit.
At the age of 11, Bopanna began to take an interest in tennis. Although it was only at 19 that he eyed a professional career, and entered the world of professional tennis in 2003. That year, he won his first Davis Cup match, defeating Japan’s Jun Kato. Soon, he became known for his doubles partnership with Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi, called the Indo-Pak Express. In 2007, the duo had a breakthrough year, too, winning four Challengers.
Three seasons later, as Rafael Nadal celebrated his maiden US Open triumph in singles, the Indo-Pak duo was slogging it out against the legendary Bryan Brothers in the men’s doubles final. With some volleys and retrieving skills, the pair stretched the Bryans to a tiebreak in the first set. It was down to chewing the fingernails for yours truly.
The question lingering in your mind was, can they hold their nerves against arguably the greatest doubles pair in men’s tennis? For a while, they even did, taking a mini break on the back of a stunning single-handed backhand return by Bopanna. Although the Bryan Brothers soon took the lead, Qureshi pulled one back with his own single-handed backhand return. There was even a big roar from the Indo-Pak duo. Bopanna then went for the wide serve, and it was an ace. When it mattered, though, the American pair pulled the strings and came out on top in the tiebreak.
The second set too went down to the wire. The Indo-Pak pair had a mini lead, with Bopanna cracking a backhand return to force the error at the net. Unfortunately, the tiebreak once again went in favour of the Bryan Brothers as they clinched the Grand Slam. It was a tournament where one of Bopanna’s shots, an overhead over his shoulder while retrieving a lob, was compared to Roger Federer’s between-the-legs strike. But the larger picture was that Bopanna was yet to win a major.
By 2012, his new doubles partner was the Indian tennis legend Mahesh Bhupathi. Success still eluded the pair as they lost to the French duo of Julien Benneteau and Richard Gasquet at the London Olympics. You wondered whether the idiom, nice guys finish first, is actually true. Bopanna, however, soldiered on. Around 14 years after being on the circuit, his moment in the sun finally arrived. Bopanna clinched his maiden Grand Slam, the French Open Mixed Doubles, with Gabriela Dabrowski as his partner.
Bopanna wasn’t satisfied with just one Grand Slam trophy in the cabinet. He wanted more. Just that he had to wait seven more seasons to seal his first Men’s Doubles Grand Slam. At the age of 43, in the Australian Open final, Bopanna’s shoulders seemed to be drooping a bit, and he was sporting a beard with a few grey hairs. But the burning desire to win remained the same. He and his doubles partner, Matthew Ebden, played a flawless tiebreak (7-0) to take the first set.
The highlight of that set was how Bopanna waited and waited for his opponents to commit to their swing pattern before clinching the point with a forehand volley. The old-school textbook doubles game was executed to perfection by Bopanna. In the second set too, at a crucial moment, he showed his agility with a lunging forehand volley. And then it happened, the duo had secured the doubles major.
Bopanna fell to the ground to celebrate the moment. All the injuries. All the training. All the investment had finally been converted into a men’s doubles triumph. It is virtually impossible to visualise Bopanna’s emotions as he had to paddle through more than two decades to take home that elusive trophy.
Unfortunately, you don’t get everything you want in life. A few months later, Bopanna couldn’t take home a medal at the Paris Olympics. And a year later, it was time to announce his retirement from the sport.
To admire the retiring Bopanna, you have to look beyond mere stats and numbers. Off the field, he was humble, and on the field, a fierce competitor who channelled his aggression to win majors, the kind of qualities you would want to gift someone on their first day at work. To summarise, Bopanna was the people’s champion.
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