Tennis player
Who is called Nirupama Sanjeev?
Nirupama Sanjeev is the first woman to win a grand slam match in a singles match at the Australian Open tennis championship in 1998. After giving birth to her daughter, she went for the match for India at the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi in 2010. Currently, she is spending her time as the tennis coach at Florida and California Bay area.
Birth:
Nirupama is a Coimbatore born athlete. She was born on 8 December 1976. Her father K.S. Vaidyanathan was her first coach. K.S. Vaidyanathan was a cricket player. He represented Tamilnadu in the Ranji Cricket tournament. She holds the tennis bat at the tender age of 5. And she got the inspiration from his brother. When India doesn’t much encourage the women’s tennis player, Nirupama faced all the obstacles and become a great tennis player from India.
Nirupama Sanjeev Early life:
Everything started with the thought of getting more of her dad’s time. Because he used to give most of his time to her brother. Her father and brother used to play tennis everyday and she was just a ball girl. And no one imagined that Nirupama would pick up tennis. His father maintained a tennis court just for playing and teaching his son tennis. Nirupama used to go there every day to just pick the balls. In the end, he gives her just five minutes to play tennis. But all the time waiting on the court she learned all the things about tennis. Once her father noticed her interest in tennis he begins to train her and make her the tennis player.
Nirupama Sanjeev career into tennis:
Nirupama Sanjeev won her first National title in the under 14 age group. In the following nationals too won the trophy. At the age of 18, she started to play professional tennis. After that David O Meara coached Nirupama.
She has also won Asian Games and 2000 Sydney Olympic games. She has won against a lot of top-50 world players like Mirijana, Lucic, Prakusya, Magdalena Maleeva, Sylvia Plishke and Janet Lee on the WTA Tour.
In 1998, she won the mixed doubles in the Asian games. The major achievement of her career is to win $75 k in the Albuquerque event in 1999. In 2003, she got retired from the game. But for the past 10 years, she ruled the tennis world of India.
Nirupama Sanjeev personal life:
Nirupama married Sanjeev Balakrishnan. Sanjeev Balakrishnan is a software engineer and the brother of the Indian sprinter Rajeev Balakrishnan from Bay Area, California. Nirupama won the National women’s title in 1992 – 1996. Then she moved to Luxembourg to train as a professional and returned the same at the age of 18.
Nirupama Sanjeev Comeback:
India’s no.1 Tennis player gave her comeback in 2010 after giving birth to her daughter. As a 33 year old mother of a daughter, Nirupama Sanjeev played for the common wealth games 2010 and in the Asian Games in Guangzhou. After retirement, currently she is coaching tennis players. She is living as a role model for the entire female tennis player out there. Surely her achievements in the past two decades will be remembered forever.
Nirupama Sanjeev and her playing style:
Nirupama Sanjeev trained in the clay courts. As compared to the hard court, clay court has several advantages. Because the clay court helps to set up the point. Since the setting point is the most important part of the top level of tennis. For Indians, they don’t have a big body build at the start of the game. So the clay court can help you to build your stamina for playing tennis.
Playing in doubles really helped Nirupama to improve her skills. So she learned a variety of shots from playing in the clay court. But nowadays India mostly has hard courts. In Coimbatore, there is a clay court that is regularly hand role every day.
Nirupama Sanjeev coaching techniques:
Nirupama has a lot of teaching techniques. But she added that she doesn’t have much patience for adults and kids. She wished that people who want and love to play tennis alone can come and learn from her. Nirupama teaches the students in an individual manner. She used to learn all the weaknesses and strengths of the students deeply. That can be used to shape them for tennis.
Challenges faced during coaching:
Nirupama Sanjeev has coached a number of students. In her career, 7 to 8 students were failed not because of the students but because of their parents. Since the parents act super pushy or super slacking. Once the student begins to play well, the parents become over-zealous and join them in other training centers. They don’t know the student very well and often the students return with injuries.
Because in crafting a tennis player it needs 8 years to do so. If you are pushing the kid at 6 years, he becomes lacking and de-motivated. Sometimes the parents start to spoon feed the student and make them confined to a certain stage which makes the students become lazy. She added that how to parent a tennis player will be her next book.
Achievements and Honors of Nirupama Sanjeev:
- A book was released in her biography called “The Moon Baller” by the Konark Publishers.
- She is the first Indian woman to win the Bronze medal in the Grand Slam against Gloria Pizzichini.
- Nirupama had also won the Bronze medal at the 1998 Bangkok Asian Games in Mixed Doubles, partnering Mahesh Bhupathi.
- She is the first Female from India to enter the top 200 world singles rankings.
- After retirement, Nirupama Sanjeev has doing commentary with Indian tennis legend Vijay Amritraj for ESPN-STAR sports.
- In October 2013, she launched her autobiography called “The Moon baller”.
- In spite of all the obstacles, Nirupama participated in Wimbledon as a junior, qualifier and as a main draw player.