Why it completely pays to be Leander

I guess when you have a good thing goingmdashlot of people wish to jump on to your boat They could in the process rock it as wellrdquo This is how I roughly remember Leander Paes cryptically responding to an offrecord question on why had split with his tennis partner Mahesh Bhupathi This is in the early noughties when Paes had come for an informal postdinner discussion to my college in DelhiBeing hormonal collegians with a simplesingle track mind we automatically assumed he was referring to a girl who mustrsquove come between him and Bhupathi Maybe the gorgeous model Anupama Verma dating Bhupathi at the time Was she Why care for facts getting in the way of good gossip Wersquod got it rightItrsquos only a couple of decades later that I realise that maybe Paes was talking about tennis coach Enrico Piperno who remained attached to Bhupathi in the later years of the LeeHesh partnership You sense this from Ashwiny Iyer and Nitesh Tiwaryrsquos documentary series Break Point that premieres on Zee5 on October 1 Of which Irsquove seen three out of seven episodes about two hours so farI actually remember Piperno as a gregarious guy on tour with the Indian team during the IndiaUS Davis Cup tie in the early rsquo90s starring Jim Courier Todd Martin and others My cousin and I barely in middle school would hang at the DLTA stadium standsmdashcheeks coloured with Leanderrsquos name or the tricolour canrsquot remember We stalked the Indian team later at the hotel lobby hoping to land an interview with PaesThis is Indian tennis from before Bhupathi and after Ramesh Krishnan famous for his cuteclerical lsquotouch tennisrsquo The squad comprised Gaurav Natekar Zeeshan Ali etcPiperno helped me meet Paes who spoke at length about why for instance he picked tennis over soccermdashthe sport he was actually better at ldquoI make fantastic effort for myself I cannot control the effort of 10 other playersrdquoProfessional tennis is admittedly one of the toughest sports still With tours all through the yearmdashathletes constantly moving from airport to airport and instantly between success and failure Itrsquos a mental game as well with skills involving you to be a ldquoweightlifter in a ballerina outfitrdquo as Paes puts itThatrsquos also a reason you find writer Malcolm Gladwell feature tennis prominently while examining the difference between sportspeople lsquochokingrsquo and lsquopanickingrsquo on the competitive fieldChoking implies a sportsperson secondguessing their natural game and regressing towards playing it too safe to eventually screw up the match after all Panicking equals throwing away a game by getting desperate and rash insteadBoth being subconscious moves when the going isnrsquot good Itrsquos not like the player can consult anyone during a tennis match Two of the greatest stars among men and women Bjoumlrn Borg and Steffi Graf left the sport at the top when they were all of 26 and 30 respectivelySounding quite Gladwellesque in fact Paes 48 says ldquoI started around age threefourfive to achieve 10000 hours of practice 10 years of training 3 million repetitions before leaving home to pursue competitive tennis at 12rdquoWhat kept him going despite enough Grand Slams and an Olympic medal is learning new things about the sport still ldquoAdopting new training systems fresh rehab processes learning new tricks to expand the tennis repertoiremdashvolleys foot workhellip ldquoReinventing is importantrdquo Paes tells meWe spoke last week since I first interviewed him Hersquos the samemdashLee the sorted life coach for an inspiring conversationalist In the interim Irsquove graduated from middle to high school finished college and been in a profession long enough to be dumped among the ldquoseniorrdquo category Paes already a proveteran of sorts in the early rsquo90s has been playing professional tennis all through stillQuite early on he also turned an individual sport into a team sportmdashconcentrating on menrsquos and mixed doubles besides playing for the country with the Davis Cup team and a nonplaying captain for peptalkmeetings between points Could that have something to do with the staggering length of his sporting careerBesides Gram Slam wins with both Martina Hingis and Navratilova even for menrsquos doubles Paes tells me hersquos had 164 partners over 31 years ldquoSqueezed every last drop of my passionrdquo Of course we remember him the most with Bhupathi They became the first Indian duo to win a seniors Grand Slam French Open 1999But Bhupathi quite unexpectedly became the first Indian to win a senior Slam evermdashin mixeddoubles with the Japanese Rika Hiraki also Japanrsquos first at the French Open 1997 Did that cause the first line of friction in the latent battle of offcourt egos with Paesmdashthe more accomplishedexperienced member who actually put together the proverbial Indian ExpressYou know what Relationships inevitably defined by how people make you feel in their company and otherwise regardless That wouldrsquove been the case between the absolutely inseparable LeeHeshI for one canrsquot forget how the graceful Paes treated me as a professional equal when I was a frickinrsquo wannabeamateur journo from Class 56 while he was on tour Will go with whatever Paesrsquos perspective on the split is Okay lemme go back to Break Point anywayMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper