A Tennis Win for the Future

On 19 September this year, Kanishk from Grade 9 won third place at a Universal Tennis Rating (UTR) Masters Tournament. Having practiced and played regularly during the pandemic, and despite caution and restrictions, Kanishk has become better at tennis. Starting his UTR journey last year, he currently has a rating of 5+ out of 16.5, and is trying play one or two UTR Tournaments each month to reach a rating of 10 by the age of 16. We reached out to Kanishk to find out more about his journey so far and plans for the future. 

I hope to get a scholarship with my UTR rating and play college tennis for a very good university – Kanishk, Grade 9 

Kanishk has been playing tennis since the age of four. He started playing for fun, but already at the age of nine, he started taking the sport more seriously after reaching the finals in an under 10 AITA tournament. “I play at least six hours on weekends, and two hours a day on weekdays. I also do fitness four hours a week", says Kanishk roughly counting out his 20 hours of tennis play and fitness every week, which has given him greater skills, strength and fitness. 

Normally in a tournament players go through three to four matches that are played in a Round-Robin algorithm. Depending on the scores of the opponents, the UTR algorithm gives players a final ranking. However, the recent UTR Tournament where Kanishk took part, only had payers with a UTR rating of 5 and above, which meant tougher opponents. Still the results in the recent UTR Tournament made Kanishk proud. “I was very happy with the result, as there were many tough players I had to face”, he says, and explains that the final match was lost against a player with an UTR of 6. The match was a close and could have been anyone’s game, with a final score of 4-3, 3-4, 11-9. 

Kanishk wants to continue with tennis in the future: “I hope to get a scholarship with my UTR rating and play college tennis for a very good university which has a great support system for tennis players. The college tennis infrastructure trains you to play for ATP Tournaments in future.”