Mumbai: Since March, Maaya Rajeshwaran Revathi has been consistently playing clay court tournaments. She has fared pretty well too. Of the seven tournaments she played, she reached a quarter-final, two semi-finals, and won the title at the J300 event in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, France.
Clay can be a difficult surface to adjust to, but the 16-year-old from Coimbatore has found her footing on the red dust.
“The fact that I’m based in Europe, I’ve been training on clay a bit more than I did earlier,” said Maaya, who trains at the Rafael Nadal Academy in Mallorca, in a virtual interview organised by the Sports Authority of India (SAI). “The more matches I play, the more I get to train on a certain surface, the more comfortable I feel.”
That is not a bad position to be in, as she gets set to compete in the main draw of the junior French Open for the first time.
The junior world No.27 has been touted as the next big women’s singles player to emerge from India. She showed why at the WTA 125 Mumbai Open last year when she came through the qualification stage to reach the semi-final—that too in her first WTA-level competition.
Expectations on the teenager, who plays aggressively off both flanks from the baseline, immediately rose. But her coaches want to ensure that her tennis growth path is measured and she isn’t rushed into the professional circuit.
“Our initial idea was that Maaya plays as many matches as possible so that she competes a lot and gets comfortable with her game,” explained her coach Polina Radeva during the interaction. “She has a big game and we want her to develop that even more to have that confidence in matches.”
Maaya’s season began in Melbourne where she lost in the first round of the junior Australian Open. After that, she played a few senior tour matches in India before switching back to the junior division.
“We wanted to stick with the junior tour because if you finish with a good ranking there, the following year you get a bit of a head start into the pro circuits. So, you get some direct entrances into pro events, and that’s our goal. The objective is to play the main draw in the junior Slams to transition with some pro events as well,” Radeva added.
The next event is Roland Garros. Last year, her campaign ended in the qualification round, but Maaya has been improving steadily since then. She credits her growth to her time at the academy, especially with the availability of quality sparring partners.
“After a certain level, it’s more about how you compete, who you are playing with,” Maaya said. “My coach in India (R Manoj Kumar) wanted me to move to Europe by the time I was 14 because he felt that I needed more competitive tennis.”
Now that she has, she has started to make the strides up the junior ranking ladder. Each step is a litmus test, to see how ready she is for the eventual jump into the senior stream. The next test comes in Paris.
