Leander Paes opens up about development of tennis in India, reveals mantra for successful career

NEW DELHI: Former India tennis player Leander Paes revealed the mantra that he feels can help an athlete achieve success amid the differnet levels of stress that one endures in their daily routine life.

During his illustrious career that has spanned over decades, Paes achieved success on the global stage and inspired the next generation in the process. In an exclusive conversation with ANI, Paes feels self-belief, mental health, and hard work guarantee a successful career. "In any sport or any walk of life, belief in yourself, mental peace and happiness and also tremendous hard work. These are guarantees for a successful career," Paes told ANI. While stressing the aspect of happiness in life, Paes believes bringing happiness to people is important. "Today, I see a lot of young children going through so much mental health stress. Board exams stress, traffic stress, home stress, relationships stress, friendships, peer pressure stress, social media, Instagram, Facebook, and social media stress. So in all of that, I feel like wherever I travel around the world, meeting people and interacting with people, I find that bringing happiness to people is very important," Paes remarked.

After Paes decided to bring the curtain down on his career in 2020, Sumit Nagal and Rohan Bopanna carried the baton and held the Indian flag high. For Paes, playing for the nation has been the most important thing for him, and he is eying the performance that they will produce in the upcoming Paris Olympics. which will kick off on July 26. "But in terms of singles performance or doubles performance, there have been one or two players that have been holding the flag high. When you look at Sumit Nagal, he's come along in the last couple of years, it's wonderful to see him holding the flag high. When you look at Rohan Bopana, winning his first men's doubles Grand Slam, that too with my old partner, Matthew Ebden, that was wonderful to see him come and win a Grand Slam. It's going to be very interesting to see how Sumit plays in singles and how Rohan and (Sriram) Balaji do in the doubles at the Olympics," Paes said. "I think that one thing that has always been most important to me is the Olympics, is Asian Games, is Davis Cup. Playing for the country, and playing for our people has always been the most important thing in my career. So for me, I look at that as a big benchmark to see as to how the boys and girls do in the Olympics, Asian Games and Federation Cup and Davis Cup," he added. The 51-year-old is associated with the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) and its initiatives to popularize and grow the game in India. While talking about his role in popularizing the sport in India and providing equal opportunity to rising players, Paes said, "Tennis is one of the only sports, and it was the pioneer in having equal prize money, a pioneer in equal scholarships. A pioneer in equal opportunities for education. That's why I'm really proud to be a tennis player and promote tennis throughout the world to give young kids an opportunity to play the sport. So I feel that in the last couple of years, tennis in India has improved a lot in the number of professional players playing the game." "During the two weeks of Wimbledon is not only the focus on the championships, but all throughout the year, they're looking to keep raising the number of people playing tennis, number of people following Wimbledon, number of people following the All England Tennis, Lawn Tennis Club in itself. If you look at the year-to-year viewing figures, in India itself, there's an increase of 96 per cent in 2003 to compare to 2022. To me, those numbers are a massive part. I feel that as one, I have been part of the tennis world for 40 years and played for about three and a half decades, 38 years to be exact. One of my biggest responsibilities was to popularize the game, to take it from a game where people perceived it as a very affluent game, to take it to a sport where the opportunity for young girls and young boys was massive," he added.