Teenager Maaya Rajeshwaran, with her sensational performance in the Mumbai Open, offers hope for Indian women's tennis.
Credit: Special Arrangement
Bengaluru: It’s not very often a women’s tennis player from India creates a flutter. In fact, it is as rare as some celestial occurrences with the legendary Sania Mirza being the last to raise the bar decades ago. A glimmer of hope though has arrived in the prodigious Maaya Rajeshwaran Revathi.
The 15-year-old from Coimbatore, whose natural talent has been the talking point on the domestic circuit over the last couple of years, gave an indication of her potential when she reached the semifinals of the Mumbai Open in early February, making most of the wildcard handed out to her.
Displaying a standard of tennis that belied her tender age, Maaya had everyone marvelling not just at the high quality of her shotmaking but her incredible temperament – again something not often seen in Indian athletes so young.
The players she took out in the country’s blue-riband event for women were World No. 225 Iryna Shymanovich of Belarus, World No. 285 Mei Yamaguchi of Japan, Kazakhstan’s World No. 335 Zarina Diyas, who had reached a career high World No. 31, World No. 264 Nicole Fossa Huergo of Italy and World No. 434 Jessica Failla of the United States.
Maaya’s incredible run was eventually halted by Switzerland’s Jil Teichmann in the semifinals but her blistering performances created a buzz even on WTA’s social media handles.
Unranked prior to the tournament, Maaya, who now trains at the world-famous Rafael Nadal Tennis Academy in Mallorca, has soared to 643 in ranking after becoming the first player born in or after 2009 from India to reach the last-four of a WTA 125 event.
“It definitely does feel great because I didn’t expect myself to make it that far,” chuckled Maaya from Mallorca in an interaction with DH. “I just wanted to play match by match because it was my first WTA tournament. I guess that approach helped. I was just in the moment and happy that I made it that far.
“When I came in as a wild card, nobody knew me. But after my performances in the qualifiers, some started to take notice of me. As I started winning matches in the main draw, more people started to watch me play. I guess the tournament helped announce myself to the Indian tennis community.”
Maaya hopes her Mumbai performance will act as a catalyst to make a similar impact in Slams. “I did have a very good start this year as I won a junior J300 tournament in the second week of January in Delhi. My main goal this season is to do well on the junior circuit and play the junior Slams. I will try to play a few WTA events as well but the main goal is the juniors.”
Maaya started playing tennis at the age of eight by accident after her father Rajeshwaran Marimuthu, a corporate employee, enrolled her at an academy close home. Within a year, she fell deeply in love with the sport and told her parents she wants to pursue it professionally when approaching 10.
Despite the sport being an expensive affair, Marimuthu and his wife Revathy backed her and today, after five years of sweat and sacrifices, she’s got an opportunity to train at the Nadal academy.
“They have an extremely professional environment and that’s the biggest plus point,” says Maaya.
“There are some exceptionally talented athletes and coaches here. Playing against some of the finest talents and working with some top coaches at the very start of my career is a massive plus point. I can’t say more because I’ve been here only since last November.”
When quizzed whether she has interacted with the legend Nadal, Maaya says the chat was very brief. “When he visited the academy and spent time with the kids, I was out competing. I met him last week for a short while and he congratulated on my Mumbai performance and asked me how my training was going on. It was short but very sweet.”