Leander Paes on Hall of Fame induction — ‘My parents’ encouragement and constant love are the reasons I could achieve it all’

Leander Paes reflects as the winter sun fades in Kolkata, the city where his childhood aspirations of tennis greatness took root. From the penthouse of an iconic building, he gazes over the vast green expanse known as the Maidan, lost in a flood of memories. The Maidan, home to major city clubs, holds a special place in Leander’s heart, where he accompanied his accomplished athlete parents and found the inspiration to become a champion himself.

Leander shared with  Sportstar the significance of being the first male player from Asia to be inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame (player category). He dedicated this prestigious award to his greatest motivators — his parents — and the millions of Indians who supported him.

What does this Hall of Fame mean to Indian tennis?

I always like to lead by example, and this, I hope, inspires all the youth in our country and shows them that from playing gully cricket or playing gully football barefoot, I could come so far. So, if they have enough passion and can work hard, they, too, can get into the Hall of Fame. It’s about telling them that if you believe in yourself and put in the hard work, it is possible to fulfil your dreams.

Being the first Asian male to be nominated in the player’s category, it’s a tribute that I would like to give to my parents. Their encouragement and constant love are the reasons I could achieve it all. They allowed an 11-year-old boy to leave home and pursue his dreams. That’s not common in Indian culture, and that too in a sport like tennis, where India has never had a Grand Slam winner before me. The sport did not have an Olympic champion before me, so it was not easy for them to allow me to chase my dreams. Allowing your child to pursue disciplines like cricket or hockey was one thing but allowing him to pursue a global sport like tennis, where the risks are so high, was not easy. I appreciate my parents for their love, unconditional support, and belief in what I was trying to achieve. I dedicate this to them.

Please share your thoughts on how the success of your parents as sportspeople influenced your career in tennis.

Being born into a legacy is a great responsibility. I could understand, at a very young age, what that responsibility meant. It was more about playing for my family and trying to emulate what my father had achieved (Vece Paes won the 1972 Olympic bronze in hockey). It was also about representing my school, city, and the wishes of more than a billion people in my country. The responsibility became even bigger as I had to achieve excellence in a sport that did not have the infrastructure when I was growing up in the 1980s. There were no Grand Slam champions or even Asian champions to pave the path for me. Yes, there were a lot of good players like Ramanathan Krishnan, who served as a good role model, and I was lucky to travel with his son Ramesh. I am also grateful to the Amritraj family, who supported me a lot with the BAT junior programme that helped nurture my junior career. But there was no system in place to guide me on how to win Wimbledon or an Olympic medal. My dream was to win an Olympic medal and prove to Indians that we could be world champions.

What are the champions made of?

I think champions are first made in the mind. Physical prowess is just a repetition of perfect practice. By doing 10,000 hours and three million repetitions, you can master anything. It takes about 10 years. The reason that I had a long career (of 38 years, including the junior years) was because of the repetition of gym, push-ups, skipping, yoga, meditation, recovery, and the relentless practice in various aspects of the game. When I won one Grand Slam, people said it was a fluke. Then I did it the second time, and they called it a fluke again. I won the four slams on all the surfaces after that, and it continued, and now I am sitting on 20 Slam titles (Two junior singles Grand Slams and 18 senior doubles Grand Slams). It was a humbling experience, and it was the determination to prove myself again and again that got me to the position where I stand now.

Champions are made of intelligence, grit, passion to live out big dreams, and the ability to stand up every time you fall. Champions are made of special stuff, and it is all out there in the mind. The ability to make a simple decision under pressure is what separates champions from normal sportspersons. You can get lucky once, but repeating that success over and over again is what makes a champion.

By the time you travelled to Chennai at the age of 11, India had won a cricket World Cup in 1983 and Olympic medals in hockey. But what inspired you to take up tennis, which was then considered a niche sport?

I had a simple and single-minded dream, and that was to prove to the world that, as Indians, we could win Olympic medals in individual sports. We had medals in field hockey, but in individual sporting events, it was a long wait since KD Jadhav’s bronze medal in 1952. There were no guidelines that could teach us how to win and be successful in an individual sport like tennis. So, becoming a pioneer in that field took great hardships. I hitch-hiked through Europe, and I had to sleep in locker rooms as there was no money to book a hotel room. I was even mugged in New York, but those things only kept me going. It was a journey to be the only Indian on tour for a large part because, by then, Ramanathan Krishnan had retired, as had Vijay (Amritraj) and Ramesh (Krishnan). Before I picked Mahesh (Bhupathi) for doubles, there were no other Indians, so travelling alone on ATP tours was not easy.

That mugging episode in New York also left a scar on your chest. So, when things got difficult or lonely, did that scar remind you of your dream and ensure you did not give up?

Hundred per cent! I see that scar every single time I put on a match shirt. Every single night I went to bed, missing home, I reminded myself of the years of sacrifice and the hard work I had already put in. There was no other option for me but to be successful. I grew up in a generation where Indian athletes were perceived to be submissive and a bit soft, and that’s one of the reasons why I became so rugged. That’s one of the reasons why I could come back from losing matches or get through the hard years of missing home. It was not easy to be far away from home and miss out on several festivals and occasions, be it birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, New Year’s, or Diwali. I gave up my whole youth and a lot of family life for 38 years and dedicated everything to my sport and craft. Everything was dedicated to my country and our people.

Does it hurt to see that nobody has carried forward your legacy? What’s ailing Indian tennis today?

I feel sad right now, looking at the state of Indian tennis. It’s sad to see that the tradition has not been continued. That being said, I have tremendous respect for the players who, without funding, a support system, or any real guidance, are still out there, persevering to pursue a professional tennis career, even though there are so many other options that are out there that are even better or safer.

So, it almost seems like it has come back to square one. I played across three decades, but now we are back to a phase where individuals are trying to muster up the courage, the finances, the knowledge, and the support system to be even out there. Individual tennis players have come out and said, ‘I need funding’ and that’s a sad realisation.

Tennis is one of the toughest sports on the planet. As a sport, it is demanding, and it’s also hard physically, mentally, and financially.

Deadly duo: Leander Paes (right) and Mahesh Bhupathi celebrate after beating Brazil’s Marcelo Melo and Bruno Soares during the Davis Cup World Group play-off in Chennai on September 18, 2010. 
| Photo Credit:
R. RAGU

A lot of sports are moving to crowd-funding models these days. Is that the way forward for Indian tennis as well?

When you are looking at any form of funding, people are looking for returns on that funding. They’re not running a charity. They’re looking for some sort of marketing behind it, some sort of publicity behind it, and some sort of return on the money that they spend on it. Otherwise, they would rather put it in the equity market, where they get a solid return. So, in that sense, it’s also an ecosystem that needs to be created, not just for tennis but for all Olympic sports. The BCCI is doing a phenomenal job with the system that they’ve created to not just look after their past champions and their past cricketers, but to also nurture the present athletes and, more importantly, to create over 100,000 cricket clubs around the country. Today, I would be surprised if there were even 100,000 tennis players in the country!

And here, you have 100,000 cricket clubs, so a minimum of 11 in each club. So, you see the numbers that are being churned and produced. Very much like tennis, cricket is not a cheap sport; you need a kit, and then there are coaching, diet, and transportation costs. BCCI’s model can be replicated by the governing bodies of other sports.

Where do you think the AITA faltered?

I don’t want to get into that because, in that, there are also different perspectives. Everyone has different perspectives and different thought processes. So, I am not the best one to answer that question. I just know that when I had an obstacle, I would just persevere and work tremendously hard with my family to find a solution.

Do you think that at a time when Indian tennis is at a crossroads, a legend like you should perhaps get into administration and try to get the house in order?

My expertise lies in the nurturing of talent and sports education. So, I have a business model where I am taking my father’s (Dr Vece Paes) sixty years of sports science, my Olympic-winning mentality knowledge, and clubbing knowledge and spreading it to the youth of the entire country through sports education in schools, colleges, tier-2 and tier-3 centres, and in rural areas. I think our real sporting talent lies in those rural areas.

In the metros, the kids have more options — eSports or gaming — but the options are still limited in rural areas. So, that’s where I want to cater. I want to go out there, recognise talents, test those talents, nurture them, and ensure that they are injury-free with the help of sports science. It’s a long process, as you are picking kids when they are young, and it takes hours and hours to create champions out of them.

But then, if Leander Paes can mentor Stefanos Tsitsipas, why can’t he work more closely with the current Indian players? Do they not approach you?

(Laughs) I get calls from Prajnesh (Gunneswaran), and he would ask about his equipment or from Arjun Kadhe, who talks about his fitness regime. I get calls from a lot of youngsters who ask about their physical fitness, mental fitness, or diet, but it’s just that we don’t speak about it. That’s personal friendship. Tsitipas’ manager called me to work with him, and it was a learning experience.

But at the end of the day, my work involves the masses, and it’s about going out there and nurturing talents. One has lived at the top of the pyramid for three decades, so he knows how to pick athletes as and when they develop and create a winning atmosphere for them. So, whether it was speaking to RVS Rathore at the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics about the mental side of things or when he finally won his medal, he said, ‘Hey Lee, thanks so much…’, so those are the things you do out of friendship.

You are asking me, What’s wrong with tennis today? Where’s the feeder system? In football, hockey, and javelin, where’s the feeder system? In such a huge country, how many have access to world-class tennis facilities? I am not talking about the infrastructure needed to play sports; I am not talking about the maidans. I am talking about the systematic training academy or high-performance centres that would pick talents at the age of 10 or 12 and tell that person that they will stick with them for the next 20 years and make them a champion.

You look at countries like England, Spain, and Holland and their approaches to football. Or look at Australia and how they excel in every Olympic sport — the reason they have won six cricket World Cups is because there’s a tradition there. Sport is a big part of their education curriculum, but that’s not the case here.

Do you think the AITA needs a fresh approach and restructure its domestic tournaments?

The infrastructure of sports has developed a lot in our country. The synthetic turfs have been introduced, we have floodlights, and the gyms are being used a lot more. But I think it’s one thing to go to the gym to become a professional athlete and a world champion, and it’s completely different to play the sport at an amateur level. However, that differentiation is not being recognised. There’s a huge difference between the two, and we need to understand that.

When you partnered with Bhupathi and focused on doubles, many in the fraternity believed it was a wrong move to shift away from singles, which earned you an Olympic medal. But three decades later, do you feel it was an emotional decision, or was it the correct choice?

My realisation as a young boy was to achieve an Olympic medal in an individual sport. Not many people understood it, let alone wanted to realise that achievement for themselves. Not many people were willing to put in those hard yards or go through the lifestyle it takes to compete at seven Olympics.

People didn’t understand it, so obviously people misunderstood me. The purpose that I had was basically to rewrite history books. Ironically, we’re having this conversation when I’m being inducted into the Hall of Fame.

I can’t expect people to understand what my journey was. I felt it was better to lead by example than waste time explaining it. I lived my life the best I could, and when I decided to shift to doubles and mixed doubles after enjoying success in singles, it came with the belief that we could win Grand Slams. And today, sitting here having won two junior singles Grand Slams and 18 senior doubles Grand Slams is a satisfying feeling. I have been very blessed to have had a phenomenal career, and I dedicate it to my team, which has been with me through thick and thin. In times like these, where everyone is busy projecting an image, on social media or in public, I just let my racquet do the talking.