Kanishk’s first international tennis matches of the season

Kanishk starts his tennis journey at his first UTR season (Universal Tennis Ranking), which is international ranking. UTR is a global tennis player rating system with the aim to create an objective, consistent, and accurate index of players' skill in tennis. UTR rates all players on a single 16.5-point scale, without regard to age, gender, nationality, or locale of a given match.

For Kanishk to get the tennis scholarship that he is aiming for, he needs to score a 9.5 or above in the UTR ranking. Currently he is at 4.66 and the journey begins. To reach his goal, Kanishk has been playing 3-4 hours a day with fitness and soccer during the summer break; and is now doing 5 days a week at ZATA (Zeeshan Ali Tennis Academy) at Inventure Academy. He also gets up at 5.30 on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s to play soccer in his community with students from schools all around Bangalore.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, strict regulations were in place during games. Players were not allowed to touch each other’s balls, and everyone were given their own can of balls with names written on them, which they had to return using their racquets. No hand shake and no referee were on court; players had to go back to give their scores themselves.

Kanishk’s first two matches started off very well against older players. In his third and final round he lost against a 27 year old. After winning the first set against his opponent, his racquet strings broke. Because his second racket with the same weight had not arrived before the match, Kanishk had to go back to a lighter and older racket; which caused him to lose rhythm, and lost the game 4-2; 2-4; and tie break 5-10. At the end of the day, Kanishk put in his best effort and is staying positive towards his goals in tennis.