Tennis - Us Open

After next week, one has to wait for a few months to watch top class tennis. US open is taking place in New York since Monday. What a bonanza for tennis aficionados! I am following tennis for more than fifty years, from the amateur years to the modern days. What changes, from ordinary rackets to the graphite rackets, from endless sets to tie-breakers, from umpire-knows-it-all to player challenges. Unfortunately though, tennis has not taken deep roots in India. In my younger days, Ramanathan Krishnan was the great player (he was world number 3 at one time) and later when I arrived here in the US in 1980, we were privileged to watch on TV Vijay Amrithraj and later Ramesh Krishnan and of course now Sania Mirza. Still for a nation of one billion people this is a very low output I don't know how many of you remember the great Davis Cup match played by Krishnan against Brazil in the sixties. Having lost the first two sets, he was down 3-5 in the third and his opponent Koch was on the match point. Then Krishnan sprung to action and saved the match points, won that game, won that set and won the next two sets and for the first time India reached the Davis Cup final, losing to the eventual champions Australia. In those days there was not much sponsorship or for that matter money. People played for the love of the game. And today, what you and I earn over a life time, the fiftieth ranked player earns in two or three years! Here is a rangOli with tennis balls and rackets and this is dedicated to the biggest tennis fan in our house!

Regards! - mOhana