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Tuesday, Feb 09, 2010
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State has good tennis potential: experts

Staff Reporter

BERHAMPUR: Orissa has ample scope to produce national-level tennis players in the near future, felt experts of the sport like Sandip Kirtane and Joy Mukherjee.

Sandip represented India in the Davis Cup and Asian Cup and has also played in junior Grand Slams in the French Open, Wimbledon and US Open. He is a winner of the Arjuna award and is now part of the tennis academy of Mahesh Bhupati. Joy happens to be one of two International Tennis Federation (ITF) certified referees in the country. Both of them were in the city to attend the All India Tennis Association (AITA) Super series tournament for the under-14 years category.

Both of them said that tennis was making progress in Orissa. According to Joy, this was unlike West Bengal where tennis was mainly concentrated in Kolkata. Sandip and Joy were pleased that tennis centres were active in several urban centres like Balasore, Rourkela, Keonjhar, Berhampur, Bhubaneswar and Cuttack. But it was felt that there was a lack of proper coaching available in the State to groom the future players. Sandip proposed that the Orissa Tennis Association (OTA) should hold regular coaching camps in different tennis centres in the State to increase the skills of youngsters attracted to the game. According to him although his father happened to be a cricket player who had played Ranji matches, proper grooming had made him a tennis player of skill.

Joy said that the vast extent of exposure to tennis all over the state could be used as strength by the OTA to produce skilled talent through proper professional coaching.

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