No threat to tennis from pickleball: Sunil Yajaman, joint secretary of KSLTA

Last week, Bengaluru city got a taste of top-flight men’s tennis action with some of the top professionals on the challenger circuit swooping in on the city.

Close to a thousand spectators soaked up the tennis action every day of the Bengaluru Open, an ATP Challenger 125 tournament, which holds the distinction of being India’s biggest ATP Tour event.

The hard-court tournament came with a prize pool of USD 200,000 and American Brandon Holt clinching pocketed 125 ATP ranking points for winning his second ATP Challenger singles title of the season.

Interestingly, the tournament came just a month after the same venue, the Karnataka State Lawn Tennis Association (KSLTA), hosted the $ 100,000 ITF Women's Circuit Tournament.

The city, in addition to be a hub for education and commerce, is also renowned for its sporting culture. While tennis has be traditionally popular in the city, Pickleball is slowing emerging as a hugely popular alternative.

How then, is the KSLTA working to keep tennis relevant in the state and what is the nature of work being done at the grassroot level?

Sunil Yajaman the tournament director for the ATP Bengaluru Open and the Joint-Secretary of the KSLTA, spoke to The Bridge about his vision for the sport in the state.

Excerpts from the interview:

Is tennis losing its popularity to pickleball in India?

Sunil Yajaman: I completely disagree with that. And well, the same similar emotion was always there even when Padel tennis started. But now suddenly people have forgotten Padel and talking about pickleball.

So, I think it's unfair to compare Padel or pickleball with tennis. I mean, tennis is really such a royal game and with such rich history. So, I don't even know why people are comparing lawn tennis with these two other sports.

I think they're all different sports altogether. Pickleball is a nice sport, it's fun and a lot of people enjoy playing it, but it's got nothing to do with tennis. So, I don't think we have any threat towards that.

And tennis will always remain what it is and even grow bigger. But yeah, good luck to pickleball because I think it's, it's a nice, easy sport for people to play with just, and have a lot of fun. But it's definitely not tennis.

You have been a player yourself and a coach. At the grassroots level, traveling for tennis tournaments and maintaining an AITA ranking is tough. What solutions do you have for the players?

Sunil Yajaman: If you're talking about the juniors, I would say that yes, they need to go out, play tournaments, matches, and mainly their focus should be on getting exposure rather than running after rankings.

Because rankings at a junior level don't really mean anything. Even if you see, most of the top players would not have done very well in the juniors, but they know how to transform to a better professional player. So, I think players should focus more on quality, on developing a game for the future by using these junior tournaments.

So, ranking should not be their priority.

What is the KSLTA doing to promote tennis that might be different from other associations in the country?

Sunil Yajaman: One thing that where definitely stand out is that we are the only state association in the country where we have about 12 district headquarters which are capable of hosting an ATP challenger tournament. And no other state has this.

We have 12 districts. All these districts have either conducted an ATP challenger event or at least an ITF World Tennis Tour event. So, I think by building complexes in all these places, so getting these international tournaments there, getting the foreign players to come and play in the tier 2, tier 3 cities, I think inspires a lot of those kids locally and also the general population of those districts.

I think a lot of buzz is created and a lot of kids are playing tennis and parents also see how important it is for their child to play a sport, especially a sport like tennis. So, I think that's the biggest contribution that case it is probably done. And apart from that, we have been hosting a lot of international events just to give that platform the opportunity for the Indian players.

And subsequently also some of the Karnataka players can get to play these international tournaments. I would say India needs to have at least 10 weeks of ATP challengers and about 20 weeks of men's ITF World Tennis and at least about 10 to 15 weeks of women's. That is required for the country, and which will help our players reach a ranking of about 250 and 300.

Mobilizing sponsorship for tennis tournament is tough. But KSLTA for the Bangalore Open was able to get 22 sponsors and partners. What was your approach?

Sunil Yajaman: Well, I think what we focused is on delivering a great product here of Bengaluru Open.

Ever since we started in 2015, I think we have always emphasized on creating a quality event and organizing the best of our ability. Players who came here spoke highly about the tournament and go back and speak across the world that way. By the word of mouth, this event has become very popular with the players across the world.

Number two is when we first started, we had a few couple of sponsors who came and supported us and probably we were also losing some money but it didn't deter to us. But I think we created a very nice brand around Bengaluru Open and the way event was organized and publicized. I think we had the support of the entire business community from Bangalore who have come forward and some of them have stayed on with us for last nine years.