As a gifted tennis player he seems to have it in him to make it big. The 21-year-old Partha Sarathi Hansdah has been winning tournaments consistently at different levels. A fourth-year student of electrical engineering of The Institute of Technical Education and Research (ITER), Bhubaneswar, has been the winner at numerous national and state level tennis tournaments in both singles and doubles in various age categories.
Partha has represented the State at Inter-State tournaments and achieved a career best All India Rank of 11 in Boys Under-14 category (in 2006). He also won the Nalco Open State Men’s Championship when he was 16 in 2008 and has been felicitated by the Government of Odisha, aluminium major Nalco and other similar organisations.
“I picked up my first tennis racquet when I was about seven years old. I started playing seriously when I was about 10 and have been playing since then,” he says.
Tennis has always been his passion. “Now it has become more of a hobby and its mostly on weekends or twice or thrice a week in the evenings. I practice after I finish my college assignments,” he says. The youngster, however, does not want to pursue tennis as a career. “To consider tennis as a career, you have to think about it when you are about 14 or 15 so that you can compete professionally when you are 18 or 19,” he says.
In his free time, Partha likes to fiddle around with gadgets, read and discover interesting things on the internet and travel.
— diana@newindianexpress.com