QUEEN’S ROAD:Four months into 2015 and Adil Kalyanpur, 15, has already bagged four titles. Tennis players on the country’s junior circuit must be warned in advance that a champion is on the prowl. And the year like the lad himself, is still young.
Winner of the Road To Wimbledon title last year, Adil started off this year with a bang. In January, he bagged the ITF Indore Grade 5 tournament doubles title. In March, he was off to Qatar and returned with a doubles gold in the ITF Qatar Grade 5 tournament. He was in Mumbai in April for the under-16 National series and triumphed in the singles and doubles as well.
“I love tennis, as well as the competition. This is what drives me, and motivates me to continue,” Adil, who was born on Republic Day, January 26, 2000, had once said. The drive and the motivation is now showing results and a lot more is surely in store for this determined boy who began playing tennis when he was just five years old after watching the game on television.
Son of Arjun Kalyanpur, a radiologist, and Sunita Maheshwari, a paediatric cardiologist, Adil has been playing tennis with great focus. Joining a training centre during the vacations near his house, Adil took to the game like a fish to water.
At 11, he won the prestigious Little Mo International tournament at the IMG-Bolletieri Academy in Bradenton, Florida. Victories in some AITA and state tournaments kept Adil’s hunger for more success burning. And he was ranked number 1 in India in the boys’ under-12 category in 2012.
He continued working hard and was among the top three in India in the under-14 age group. As a result of this swift accomplishment, he was selected to be on the Indian junior tennis team. At the Asian championships in Ho Chi Minh city in March 2014, he beat top players from Korea, China and Malaysia to win the title, thus earning himself a berth in the ITF Asia team. In April 2014 he reached a high of No 2 in Asia.
The highlight of his fledgling career was getting selected to play at Wimbledon and winning the doubles title there in August 2014. He achieved this by winning the Road to Wimbledon series in Delhi organised by the Wimbledon Foundation in April 2014. The same month, he also donned the blue shirt to play the World Junior Cup for India.
Adil, in his junior career thus far (April 2015), has won 38 singles titles, 19 runners up and 29 doubles titles. He stands 6.2 ft in his socks and is an all round talented, natural tennis player. He started tennis training at TAMS academy in Whitefield and is currently being trained by a former Indian Davis Cupper, Vishal Uppal at DLTA in Delhi and sponsored by BABOLAT for his equipment.
Adil’s favourites are Swiss master Roger Federer and Serbian World number one Novak Djokovic. The teenager is grateful to his parents and sister for their unstinted support.
Players excelling in singles and doubles are a rarity in Indian tennis. Most of them, including the top ones, take to doubles and mixed doubles while almost ignoring singles. The magic of tennis is in singles. And Adil is very much weaving his own into it.