CHENNAI: Apart from all his flashy body art, Sumit Nagal has a piece of accessory that hangs around his neck. It has "Project 61" inscribed on it. Sixty-one is a special number as far as Indian men’s singles tennis concerned; nobody has been ranked higher than Somdev Devvarman, who was ranked World No 62 on this side of 2000. The 22-year-old, who rose up the rankings after enjoying a consistent second half of 2019, believes that he will one day be able to get to that milestone.
However, in the short term, his focus is on staying injury-free, making the main draw of all the Slams and perhaps breaching the top 100. To try and tick all those boxes in 2020, the Jhajjar lad began off-season training at Aspire Foundation from December 14. Off-season training, to state the obvious, is that time of the year when tennis players get to work on their fitness and overall game.
With both fitness trainer Milos Galecic and coach Sascha Nencel here till December 27, Nagal hopes to carry on his recent good work. "There is no guarantee in tennis, but I just want to take it week by week and keep doing the right things. The results will hopefully follow," he said during an interaction on Friday. Nagal attributes the results he’s had this year to a sound body for the first time in "four, five years".
“The biggest factor this year is staying injury-free. Last four, five years, I was playing for six to eight months every year. This is the first year that I have managed to play a whole year without a big injury.”
After beginning 2020 with Canberra Challenger on January 6, he will proceed to the qualifiers of Australian Open. While he is currently World No 130, he wants to move up by at least 50 rungs by the time Olympics comes around.
“The aim next year is to play more of the ATP Tour. But I also have to improve my rankings. I am still at the spot where I will mostly be in qualifiers. So the aim from there is to make the main draws of Tour events.”
Meanwhile, Mahesh Bhupathi, who was also at the event, refused to say if he would be open to become captain of the Davis Cup team for the upcoming qualifiers against Serbia.