A little less than 27 years ago, a few of us were playing India’s favourite pastime – a game of cricket. After all, on a school holiday, it was time to bring out the bat, ball, stumps and play some gully cricket. But during one of those friendly matches, a friend of mine ended up telling us that Star Sports was showing the highlights of the US Open second-round match between Leander Paes and Andre Agassi, the 1994 US Open champion. As someone who was a passionate tennis follower, it was time for me to abandon the cricket match and switch on the TV.
In 2023, if someone scrolls through these first few lines, he or she might end up thinking: “What is the use of watching the highlights of a match, when the result is already known?” To answer that, we have to take a jog down memory lane to a different era. It was a time when the majority of middle-class families in India didn’t have access to the internet. Although Cable TV had become a rage, Prannoy Roy and company were still a couple of years away from striking a deal with Rupert Murdoch’s Star Network. So, for India-centric news, Doordarshan was still the go-to channel. Those who hadn’t seen the match live – it had been played in the early hours of the morning in India – wouldn’t have known the result.
It was a contest between two players of contrasting styles. At one end was Leander – full of energy, and some preternatural hand-eye coordination at the net. On the other side was Agassi, arguably the best baseliner from his era. In the first set, Leander chipped and charged to the net, and used his famous drop shot to force his opponent to come forward so he could employ the lob. He also played all kinds of volleys – drop volley, punch volley and block volley. Among all the mind-numbing rallies, there was one in the first set which made you scratch your head in utter disbelief. I’m quite certain Agassi would also have been befuddled by Paes’ style of play.
In that rally, Paes played the slice backhand, and soon found himself at the net. Meanwhile, Agassi ripped his trademark forehand cross-court, in an attempt to play the passing shot. Most likely, that shot would have been a winner against a lot of other players from that time. But not against Paes. He ran across and played a lunging drop-volley. Agassi, however, got to the ball and chipped it across the net. That was when Paes showcased some sorcery.
He somehow used those great hands to chip a lob over Agassi’s head. Agassi was equal to the task as he ran backwards in order to force Paes to try one more shot. Paes’ reply was a drop volley on the backhand side. Although it was a good volley, Agassi didn’t give up and he showed more of his retrieving skill by getting to the ball. Eventually, Peas finished the point with a lunging volley into the open court. Even if you flip though 100 pages of a dictionary, it’s hard to find words that describe that particular rally. For a moment, it felt like watching Tom and Jerry play tennis, with the Jerry’s tactical nous and perhaps some sixth sense helping him to win that particular point.
At one point, Paes led 6-3, 4-0 and a major upset seemed to be on the cards. But Paes perhaps had used up too much of his energy to take the lead. Slowly but steadily, Agassi’s baseline game overpowered him, as he won in four sets. In the last two sets, Paes still played the occasional drop volley or the punch volley, but by then it was quite evident that Agassi had gained the upper hand.
Many years later, Paes shared his thoughts about his street-smart play at the net with the Olympic Games’ website. “Akhtar [Ali] sir gave me a nickname ‘chalaaki’ (cunning), because he felt I played too many drop shots all the time. I kept on trying to explain to him that I don’t have a good tennis technique. I started tennis late. So, obviously, I have to do ‘chalaaki’ to win points. You hit drop shots, let them come forward, and then you hit the lob.”
Agassi, who also defeated Paes in Atlanta in the semi-final of the Olympics in 1996, said in his autobiography: “In the semis, I meet Leander Paes, from India. He’s a flying jumping bean, a bundle of hyperkinetic energy, with the tour’s quickest hands. Still, he’s never learned to hit a tennis ball. He hits off-speed, hacks, chips, lobs — he’s the Brad [Gilbert] of Bombay. Then, behind all this junk, he flies to the net, covers so well that it seems to work. After an hour, you feel as if he hasn’t hit a ball cleanly — and yet he’s beating you soundly.”
The US Open match came a few days after Paes had defeated Fernando Meligeni in Atlanta to ensure that India would win a first individual Olympic medal after 44 long years. He triumphed on that day despite sustaining a wrist injury. There are other unforgettable moments from Paes’ singles career in the Davis Cup – wins against Henri Leconte, Arnaud Boetsch, Wayne Ferreira, Goran Ivansevic and Takao Suzuki.
It was also in 1996 that Mahesh Bhupathi and Paes paired together in doubles on the ATP tour. By the end of 1997, the duo were the toast of a nation starved of sporting achievements, as they reached the top 15 in the rankings. Paes went on to win 18 majors in doubles – men’s (8) and mixed (10).
Amid all those illustrious achievements, those 12-13 games at the US Open against Agassi are a small footnote. They perhaps wouldn’t even find a mention in biographies written on Paes. But such were the believe-it-or-not skills on display during those dozen games that those memories will echo in this writer’s mind for a lifetime. As Agassi summed it up at the post-match press conference: “He was playing really out-of-this-world tennis.”