Bhupathi and Ansal Properties teamed up to set up tennis academies

NI Wire

New Delhi

Thu, 12 Jul 2007: 

July 12: After the initiative of Essel Group and some senior cricket players to set up cricket academies now its time for tennis star Mahesh Bhupathi to setp tennis academies.

Yesterday in the capital Bhupathi and Real Estate Company Ansal Properties and Infrastructure Ltd signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to provide infrastructure facilities to the emerging youngsters across the country.

Keeping in mind the growing popularity of Tennis in India this would be a great to groom the best talents by making available the required infrastructure needs. The plan is to set-up as many as 16 tennis academies in different townships developed by API and the academies would be named as Mahesh Bhupathi Tennis Academy.

Reportedly each academy would cost around Rs 5-7 crores with all modern facilities. Though Tennis is gaining popularity with players like Sania Mirza, Bhupathi, Leander Paes, Sunita Rao, Sikha Rao, Prakash Amrit Raj, Rohan Bopanna, Karan Rastogi but the number is very few. Therefore, it is the need of the hour to take tennis across the country.

The All India Tennis Association (AITA) that acts as a federation has established academies in Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai along with two National Tennis Academies in Delhi and Gurgaon. AITA is also arranging both junior and senior level tournaments every year but that is not enough to meet the need of the players in other cities.

Initially Ansal will build infrastructure in Delhi, Jaipur, Ludhiana, Mohali, Jodhpur, Meerut, Panipat, Lucknow along with Noida and Gurgaon.

However, Bhupathi had made it clear that his academies would be operated fully privately without any support from AITA but the aim is same to improve lawn tennis in India. If we look at the real situation then can find that Lenader Paes as a senior player still leading the Indian team both in Davis Cup and ATP tournaments hosted by India. There is lack of emerging talent in tennis and hence is the time to raise the standard of the game in India. No doubt this is a good effort from both Bhupati’s venture Globosports and API.