Jump of 1485 in 16 months: Kadhe credits Oklahoma stint for net gains

CHENNAI: When Arjun Kadhe came back to India after finishing a tennis scholarship-based four-year programme at Oklahoma State University in August 2017, he was ranked 1878 in the world. Since becoming a full-time professional in the same month, no Indian player has improved as much as the 25-year-old in terms of rankings. After finishing 2017 as World No 610, he jumped 218 places in the last 12 months to be World No 392 on December 31, 2018. In all, he has jumped 1485 rungs in a little over 16 months. 

On Wednesday, he continued his ascent with a routine 6-3, 6-2 win over 13th seed Jose Hernandez-Fernandez to advance to the third round of the Chennai Open Challenger. Considering that Kadhe is one of the few active Indian players to have experienced the uber-competitive US Collegiate experience, his ceiling could potentially be a lot higher than his Indian counterparts. He attributed his improvements over the last 16 months to the preceding 48 months at Oklahoma State. 

“I learned a lot (during my time there),” he said after the win over Hernandez-Fernandez. “I’m happy that I did it. Apart from the tennis, it also gave me a character and personality as well as they made tennis a very team sport.” If he had decided to stay back in India to pursue his career through the Futures route, he might have missed out an awful lot. He explains how. 

“I think playing a lot of matches in the spring every year helped me the most,” he said. “In that season alone, there is a match every weekend. There is lots of scope for improvement. Even if you lose a match, you work for 4-5 days before playing the next match. In Futures, if you lose a match, there is, maybe, a match after three weeks.” 

The structure is also so intense that players are more or less ready by the time they graduate to the big stage. That there are 20 US players in the top-200 in rankings captures this point. It’s also no accident that Somdev Devvarman, who was briefly ranked No 62 in the world (best by an Indian man in more than two decades), came through the same system. Given that the system places lots of onus on fitness and match preparation, Kadhe already had a first-mover advantage over most of his peers. 

To accelerate the next part of his development process, he is eyeing a stint or two at Germany’s Alexander Waske Tennis-University (where Prajnesh Gunneswaran goes to train). Pune is his current base but lack of quality hitting partners is holding him back.

“The problem in Pune is there are no quality players to spar with. The problem is not the coach. If you are hitting with a junior, you really can’t work on the things you want to work on.” He can take one giant stride on Thursday when he meets Prajnesh for a quarters berth. 

Results (Singles: Rd 2, Indians only): Prajnesh Gunneswaran bt Daniel Altmaier (Ger) 6-4, 6-4, Arjun Kadhe bt Jose Hernandez-Fernandez (Dom) 6-3, 6-2, Saketh Myneni bt N Vijay Sundar Prashanth 6-4, 6-3. 

Thursday’s matches (Singles: Rd 3, Indians only): Myneni vs Alejandro Davidovich Fokina (Esp), Sasi Kumar Mukund vs Mohamed Safwat (Egy), Kadhe vs Gunneswaran.