ABU DHABI The UAE’s top junior tennis player Sanjana Sudhir has set her sights firmly on the junior grand slams next season.
“That would be my last year as a junior player and I want to play all the Grand Slams. It would be one of my realistic targets,” Sanjana said.
The 17-year-old, who was ranked the UAE under-18 number one player last year, is currently ranked 344 in ITF juniors. “Actually this year I did have a chance to enter the main draw of the juniors tournament at the Australian Open but we couldn’t plan it since it involves lot of logistics,” she added.
For now, Sanjana is busy preparing for the two ITF juniors tournament to be held in Qatar in March and then two in Thailand in April.
“My immediate goal is to ensure my ranking is between 100 and 200 by this year-end. Next year I want to finish on a two-digit ranking,” said Sanjana, who has jumped around 300 places since last year.
“Now it gets difficult and lot of players get stagnated in the same position. I have been playing only Grade 4 and 5 tournaments which do not have much points. So, I will be playing more of Grade 1 and 2s this year and doing well in this tournaments will help me collect more points,” she said, adding: “So by next year if I can get into the top 150 in rankings, which is the cut-off for Grand Slam juniors, it should help me play all four Grand Slams.”
Sanjana, who lives in Al Ruwais (around 200km from Abu Dhabi), travels three days a week to Abu Dhabi for training at the PSS Emirates at Zayed Sports City. She also has a special training session with head coach Sigi Meeuws.
“For the past few months it has been a regular routine now. Three days I stay in Abu Dhabi and train and in the evening I do my fitness and again practice for an hour or so. During tournaments I take it a little easy,” she said.
“We have good tennis courts at Al Ruwais, but I don’t have practice partners, so I can’t practice on the other days. Recently we bought a tennis machine and I practice with that,” she added.
The Indian expat is also wary about the expenses involved in pursuing her dreams and feels it would be helpful if she could manage some sponsors.
“Tennis is a very expensive sport. It involves lot of money since we need to travel a lot for the tournaments. It would be good have some sponsors, who can take care of my kit and travel.
“There are not many tournaments in the region and all of them are of Grade 4 and 5. With not many players coming out of this region, they have very limited tournaments,” she said.
Sanjana, who is currently doing her online schooling, has also kept her options open to pursue her education in the US on a tennis scholarship.
“I can always join a good tennis college in America. A lot of players come out from there as professionals.
“Before that I want to give myself one year and focus completely on tennis for now. I really don’t want to plan too far since you never know what can happen. I would like to keep short-term goals and focus on achieving them,” she said.
