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Future in good hands: Mahesh Bhupathi

Principal Correspondent

KOCHI: The last few weeks have been wonderful for Indian tennis. A few days after Somdev Devvarman’s sensational run in the ATP Chennai Open came Yuki Bhambri’s boys’ title at the Australian Open and then Mahesh Bhupathi and Sania Mirza provided the mixed doubles joy.

“January has been a blockbuster for Indian tennis…hopefully, the rest of the year can be so too,” said Mahesh Bhupathi at the Regional Sports Centre here on Thursday evening.

The youngsters’ good run should do a world of good for the country’s Davis Cup team which was anxiously looking for quality players who could take over from Leander Paes and Bhupathi a few years ago.

“We have a good system in place, some six to seven years down the line, we’ll have a good bunch for the Davis Cup,” said the doubles star who was in the city to assess the progress of the young players at the Mahesh Bhupathi Tennis Academy here.

“Somdev has made the progress from collegiate tennis very quickly and Yuki is the best junior to come out of India in a long time,” said Mahesh, “which means the system is working well.”

A couple of years ago, Mahesh had said that his goal was to get 10 Grand Slam titles. Now that he has won 11, does he think he could go to 15?

“At this stage of my life, I’ll take it one at a time,” he said.

“But if I get to 15, I think it will be extremely special.”

Dangerous duo

Regarding Sania he said, “obviously, she is a high-quality doubles player. She hits the ball very hard and that complements my net play. We are always a dangerous doubles team. Hopefully, we’ll be playing together in the rest of the grand slams too.”

He was happy with the progress of his Kochi indoor centre.

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