For greater than two-and-a-half many years of his taking part in profession, Leander Paes resembled a quintessential showman. He basked within the highlight, introduced emotion and theatre to the courtroom as he sprinted between traces, dived full size to place racquet to ball, chest-bumped his companions and high-fived followers.
However, not like many a showman, Leander doesn’t have an asterisk subsequent to his identify. His story shouldn’t be one in all “wasted potential”, a fairly pejorative time period used to explain the likes of Nick Kyrgios, who’s a Major doubles champion and a Wimbledon singles finalist no much less. Within Leander’s pint-sized body of 5’10” – small by modern-day tennis requirements – rested a genius tennis participant, winner of 18 Grand Slam titles (eight in doubles, 10 in blended doubles), 54 profession doubles titles, a report 45 Davis Cup doubles victories and a person singles Olympic medal.
The Indian tennis legend turned 50 on Saturday, and till March 2020 when COVID-19 hit, he had his eyes set on an eighth Olympic look, in Tokyo, and had additionally branded the months main into the showpiece occasion as “One Last Roar”, with custom-made T-shirts and a video-camera in tow. In late 2021, he even made an entry into the political enviornment in Goa, however not a lot got here of it. But he stays within the limelight, having by no means retired formally and holding his political playing cards near his chest. Like most showmen, he writes his personal guidelines.
Leander’s inventory was largely constructed by his exploits within the mid to late Nineteen Nineties, which continued properly into the second decade of the millennium. It was a time when a newly liberalised India was having its first brush with the cut-throat professionalisation of sport and it was as much as Leander, together with Sachin Tendulkar and Viswanathan Anand, to point out that Indian sport may stand shoulder to shoulder with the remainder of the world.
The bronze medal on the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, the place he beat Brazil’s Fernando Meligeni from being a set down within the playoff, was a logo of this, for he was the primary particular person medallist from India since Ok.D. Jadhav secured third place in wrestling on the 1952 Helsinki Games.
Leander Paes stands on the rostrum after profitable a bronze medal within the males’s singles tennis occasion on the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta.
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Unmatched zeal
He performed Davis Cup for India with unmatched zeal, criss-crossing continents, adapting to diverse circumstances and time-zones. Back then, singles and doubles matches within the premier competitors have been best-of-five set affairs, and Leander would play each singles and doubles, which meant three energy-sapping matches in three days. Some of his most well-known singles wins got here towards the French duo of Arnaud Boetsch and Henri Leconte within the quarterfinals in 1993, versus South African Wayne Ferreira in 1994 and Croat Goran Ivanisevic in 1995.
“We were playing France on clay and it was one of his best performances in the Davis Cup,” Ramesh Krishnan, Leander’s teammate in that 1993 tie, informed Sportstar. “He won both his singles, which was fantastic. He was charged up and was able to rise to the occasion and play above himself consistently. It also suited his temperament – of one match on the main court with all the attention. He wanted the bigger occasion.”
This temperament mirrored in his fashion of tennis as properly. In a format like doubles, the place factors are brief, the presence of an enormous serve or a crunching forehand is an absolute should. Leander had neither. In his well-known win over Pete Sampras at New Haven in 1998, he did hit an astonishing seven aces to the American’s 4, however by his profession, his serve was a mere place to begin in his journey in direction of the online, the place he was a grasp.
His volleys have been first-rate, with the ball refusing to rise and dying immediately as if it was caught in a cobweb. He may cowl the online regardless of not having an enormous wingspan and will poach like no different. In the final aspect, he was a bit like Mohammed Azharuddin on the cricket area, whose fielding approach was constructed on an economic system of motion. Both males could be on the proper place on the proper time, with their anticipation standing out.
Bhupathi the precise foil
In the tall and highly effective Mahesh Bhupathi, Leander discovered the precise foil for this sport and collectively they created historical past, profitable three Majors, together with the French Open and Wimbledon double in 1999. In Davis Cup, they performed 27 ties as a pair, out of which a whopping 25 resulted in wins, putting them fourth within the all-time record.
It was in blended doubles that Leander’s court-craft discovered creative expression. The glamorous format solely exists at Grand Slam occasions and at competitions just like the Olympics and the Asian Games. It’s extra hit-and-miss and each pair is kind of a scratch pair. But he received the Australian Open and Wimbledon with the enduring Martina Navratilova in 2003, when the latter was 46.
And with Martina Hingis, he received all 4 Majors in an 18-month span, together with the final on the 2016 French Open. It capped an exquisite Slam-winning run for Leander which had began all the best way again in 1999 when he tasted victory for the primary time in Paris with Bhupathi.
“Lee was playing at a very high level for a really long time,” Somdev Devvarman informed Sportstar. “The electricity that he played with, the fact that he was playing singles, was top-100 in singles and obviously winning slams in doubles – those are the things that drew me to him as a young player. The energy that he came out with, the quick hands, the volleys, the speed, the fire and the fact that he got the crowd going.”
For all of the accomplishments, Leander’s was not a spotless profession. The choice squabbles forward of quadrennial occasions just like the Olympics and Asian Games, and his notorious run-ins with Bhupathi forged a unfavorable gentle on Indian tennis. The most up-to-date was in the course of the 2017 Davis Cup contest towards Uzbekistan in Bengaluru when Bhupathi, as captain, dropped Leander and the latter left after the primary day of the tie.
Still the darling
But within the eyes of the general public, he was and nonetheless is the darling, profitable the notion battle nearly all the time. Perhaps, it’s because his is a charismatic and magnetic persona that may carry even the dourest of settings.
In these tears that rolled down his cheek when the nationwide anthem was sung sealed his check of patriotism, these unbelievable one-liners he conjured – “books are being closed, the library will soon shut,” he mentioned at his final Tata Open Maharashtra look in 2020 – made him a smash hit with the press.
From the start till the very finish, he craved consideration, however had the achievements to again that. One could possibly be concurrently repelled and mesmerised by Leander. A quintessential showman he certainly was.