LEFTY'S BRUSH WITH DEATH

Lefty was Ameya Chandravakar and he came from Mumbai, back then called Bombay.  Lefty was one of the best U14 players in India and was developing well in the team.  He was also well liked at the Britannia Amritraj Tennis Scheme (BAT) and made everyone laugh with his wit and sleepy laidback nature.

The BAT team often traveled within India to tournaments.  Sometimes we traveled with the entire team of 8 players which meant that both BAT coaches would go with them.  This would mean separate wake up times, separate practice times, quite a logistical exercise.  Usually in the morning one coach would take boys who had early matches to warm-up, while the other coach would take the remaining boys at a later time.

One such trip was to New Delhi.  We always stayed in the cheapest hotels, sometimes 4 players to each room.  On this trip to Delhi we had found a hotel with rooms on the roof, literally on the roof!  There were two such rooms and we squeezed 8 players and two coaches into these two “rooms”.

I stayed in one of the rooms with “Lefty”, Sharad Kohli and Chanderveer Singh.  I gave the boys the beds and I slept on the floor.  Late that night I woke up with a strange feeling.  I wasn’t feeling well and my head was spinning.  I propped myself up on my elbows to better assess my condition, we were eating food prepared in some dodgy kitchens so this was not that uncommon. My head and body were moving like I was onboard a boat, I was in bad shape!  As I sat there in the darkness I suddenly realized I was feeling fine, but why was the room moving?  Then it dawned on me, it was an earthquake, and a big one!  Worst of all we were at the top of a flimsy Indian building involving god knows how many construction short cuts! I needed to wake the boys and get them downstairs quickly.

First I woke Lefty, shook his feet and said “Get up, it’s an earthquake”.  Sharad and Chanderveer were out of bed virtually as I was rushing out the door to wake the 2^nd room.  I knocked at the door of the second room and it opened quickly, some of the other boys had felt the tremor also.  Soon we had everyone outside on the rooftop.  I did a quick head count, one player was missing – lefty!  I rushed back to the first room and there he was, fast asleep.  I shook him again and said “Lefty get up!” to which he mumbled under the blankets “I’ll go with the next group Sir”.  Lefty thought it was simply time for practice but it was 3am in the morning.  “Earthquake Lefty, Earthquake!”.  What happened next was surreal.  Lefty sat up in the bed with an all knowing look on his face and said “I thought I felt an earthquake Sir”.  That was lefty, earthquakes were dangerous things but sleep was more important!

Later we were all assembled down stairs on the roadside, including Lefty.  We waited for about 30 minutes to see if the quake would return.  Sometimes the most destructive earthquakes are preceded by a smaller one, so we had to make sure the danger had past.  If a bigger quake was to follow the last place we wanted to be was on top of this flimsy Delhi building.  Luckily for us there were no more earthquakes and we were able to safely return to bed.

That was lefty’s brush with death.  He would have slept through anything nature could muster and not known anything about it!

THE CONTINENTAL GRIP SAGA

During the Britannia Amritraj Tennis Scheme (BAT) days in India it was really difficult sometimes working with the Amritraj family in that they were very old school regarding tennis.  What had worked for them in their rise to the top would work again was their philosophy.  One story that caused quite a headache at the time was the Continental Grip Saga

Every so often one of the Amritraj brothers Anand, Vijay or Ashok would return to India to visit their parents.  This would always mean a visit to the BAT program to see the progress of the boys and most of the time they would want to hit with them.  This hitting session would be more in the realm of a workout for the brothers after their long flight from the US rather than a “coaching session” This was fine with me because there is nothing worse than someone coming in with no knowledge of the program and the topics we were working on, and try to “coach” the team.  However it did happen sometimes.

On one occasion we were drilling players on approaching the net and finishing the point with a volley.  Our coach was feeding a short, low ball so that the player could approach the net and play the volley.

In the middle of the drill the Amritraj Mercedes pulled into the complex and out stepped Anand Amritraj and his mother.  They must have seen the drill as they drove up and were obviously irritated by the time they got out of the car.  I was summoned and immediately asked “what is this Paul”?  I wasn’t completely sure what the question meant but knew they were not happy so I asked how they would like the drill to change.  Mrs. Amritraj said that she would like to see the ball fed deeper and faster, obviously at odds with our desire for the players to experience a realistic situation.  We wouldn’t want them to come to net on a deep, fast ball like that anyway!  But the Amritraj family were not used to being challenged on any topic and it would have been pointless to do so now so I walked to the fence and instructed the coach involved in the drill to feed the ball fast and deep to the baseline.  He gave me a strange glance but knew something was up.

I will always remember the look on the face of the player receiving the first ball at the baseline.  He was still looking for the “short approach shot” to take him to the net. When the first feed almost hit him on the foot he looked up at the coach with a stunned look of disbelief, a look asking “how am I supposed to approach on that ball”?

This was the type of situations that we had to put up with and it happened all the time.  The BAT program achieved great results over the years because of the coaches and their ability to get the job done despite the nonsense around them.

Some months later we had a visit from Vijay Amritraj.  As he was standing at courtside watching the boys hitting he asked me “What grips are they using”, to which I replied that western and semi western grips were mostly being used.  In Vijay’s opinion they would be hitting the ball a lot better if they were using continental grips.  I mentioned that no player in the top ten (at that time) used a continental grip and he asked me to name which players didn’t use continental grips.  I began to name the top ten from number one to number ten but was stopped at about number four.  “You’re naming exceptions” he said, to which I replied as politely as possible “I’m naming the top ten”.   It was no use, Vijay began to insist that the boys all change their grips to continental grips!

I remember walking home from practice that night totally confused with how I would handle this new dilemma.  To change the boys to continental grips would ruin their games, and in some cases it would be doubtful if most of them could ever play at their usual high level again.  What was I to do?  Late that night I even thought of calling Peter Burwash, founder of our company.  Perhaps he had enough authority to get Vijay to see sense.

By the morning I was still unsure how to approach this new crisis.  I knew that changing the grips of players at this level would virtually ruin their games for good.  I also knew that Vijay would turn up for the afternoon session and expect to see some progress with the new grip changes.

The afternoon session arrived and as I stood the boys in front of me to make the Change of Grip Announcement I suddenly had an idea.  I knew that a change of grip would mean a lack of control for the boys.  This lack of control would be made even worse if they tried to hit harder, and would result in horrendous mistakes.  We would give Vijay his continental grips after all!

When Vijay finally arrived at practice the boys were already out hitting groundstrokes with their new grips.  It wasn’t pretty… balls were flying everywhere, particularly skyward which happens because the new grips present the racquetface open on contact with the ball.  The faster you hit, the higher the ball goes, some were even landing on the road outside the courts!

After a few moments Vijay enquired why the boys were hitting so poorly.  I put on my calmest voice to say that it was nothing to worry about, merely the result of changing from their normal grips to the new continental grips.  “How long do you think it will take them to adjust to the new grips”? asked Vijay.  Again, as calm as could be I replied “It shouldn’t take that long, perhaps 3-4 months”.  There was silence, long silence.  Vijay asked “Do they have tournaments coming up”?  I was winning!  “There are some tournaments next week” I said.  Vijay had seen enough, he asked me to make the grip changes in small increments and over time.  I knew this would be the end of the continental grip saga.  Vijay wanted results from the boys and this was going to interfere with results.

Continental Grips were never mentioned again.

INDIA AND THE AMRITRAJ LIVING ROOM

I wasn’t to realize it when, in 1990, I first arrived in India, but it was to be the start of a long love affair with the country and its people. 

Years earlier as a junior player competing on the New Zealand Junior Tennis Circuit I stayed at a house in Wellington that had just installed colour TV.  

Now that doesn’t mean much to younger people today but back in 1975 some lucky homes in New Zealand were just starting to replace their black and white models with new colour TV’s!   It was just fascinating to watch all your favourite programs in colour.  Oddly enough one of the best programs to view in colour at the time was Sesame Street.  “Big Bird” was yellow!

During my stay in Wellington, New Zealand was also playing Davis Cup against India and the Amritraj brothers, Vijay and Anand were doing their best to beat the New Zealand team of Onny Parun and Brian Fairlie on the grass courts at Stanley Street, Auckland.  

It was really special for me to watch the dark ebony Amritraj brothers move about on a perfectly manicured grass court.  On top of that, players back then were just beginning to wear some colour in their tennis outfits, especially shirt collars and short pockets. 

This was very glamorous stuff at the time and when I arrived in India to start work at the Britannia Amritraj Tennis Scheme some 16 years later, actually meeting the Amritraj family personally was very significant to me. 

My first contact was meeting the family patriarch, Robert Amritraj at Madras airport.  Once I cleared immigration I made my way out to the family car and sat with Robert waiting on Vijay to arrive on a later flight from LA.  It was evident that the Amritraj family was no normal Indian family as we seemed to be sitting in the only Mercedes Benz at the airport, if not the state of Tamil Nadu. 

I actually traveled back to the “BAT” apartment alone. As I was to learn very quickly, not all men are created equal in India and protocol demanded that I travel in the BAT van. Although I sometimes got to ride in the family Mercedes, it didn't happen that often!

After washing up and checking our new home out my colleague Rob Smith and I were summoned to the Amritraj house located next to a cemetery and on busy Sterling Road.  

The house is a curious arrangement as it has been divided in to two parts, the top half, where the Amritraj family lives and the bottom half, where Mrs. Amritraj’s sister lives.  Both are elderly women but seemingly haven’t spoken to each other for so many years no one is sure just how long it’s been.  There must have been a lot of bad blood between them as Maggie Amritraj never mentioned her sister nor acknowledged that she existed, even though she was living directly above her!

The highlight on that first day for me was being welcomed inside the Amritraj living room and sitting amongst all the trophy cabinets and tennis memorabilia.  
The room is circular and spacious but it was being in the company of Vijay that was special to me.  Here was that guy on the TV who had captured my attention all those years ago.  I was now actually in his childhood home chatting with him while stealing glances at the tennis history around the walls.  

Maybe my decision to leave New Zealand and try coaching tennis overseas wasn’t such a goofy idea.  If I didn’t last very long at this new adventure at least I had met Vijay Amritraj and had been a guest in his living room. 

Working overseas was already looking like a good idea.

MARCO R.I.P.

Coaching tennis can have its rewards.  Over the years I have been able to really affect people’s lives through tennis. 

When I first arrived in Bangkok in 1986 I worked at the Hilton Bangkok, one of the best hotels in the city at that time. The Hilton Bangkok had a top flight French Restaurant called Ma Maison and I think it still goes by that name today.  The manager of Ma Maison was Marco, actually an Italian guy in his mid-twenties who stood stiff and proud at the entrance to the restaurant every evening. Marco and I would exchange greetings as I returned from the tennis courts in the evenings and he waited at the doorway for his evening clientele. Sometimes I would stop and talk, usually small talk, but it was always fun as Marco had a good sense of humor.  One day Marco said that he had always wanted to learn to play tennis but had never had the opportunity. I offered to teach him and Marco accepted!

In the beginning Marco couldn’t even make contact with the ball but his joy at just swinging a racquet was plain to see.  I was able to try different approaches to teaching him and soon Marco began to improve until he was able to rally with me after only a few days. During this time Marco’s whole personality began to change.  He began to exercise more away from our scheduled lessons.  He stopped smoking and eating red meat.  With these changes even Marco’s appearance began to alter, he was a new man and Marco began to look at me as a messiah who had changed his life.

I left the Hilton not long after and lost contact with Marco.  I heard stories that he eventually left the Hilton Bangkok and had gone to Phuket Island to work, taking a job as a general manager at a resort hotel there.  This was great news as he had an excellent service mentality and this was just the type of work he would excel at.

Years later Thailand was shocked when the Dragon Air flight from Phuket to Bangkok crashed into the sea shortly after take off.  All the passengers were killed, including my dear friend Marco who was on-board that day.  Unfortunately there was an element of horrible bad luck to this story.  Hours before the flight the Governor of Phuket was running late for the scheduled flight.  His wife kept pleading with him to hurry or he would miss the flight to Bangkok.  He insisted that he had arrived quite late in the past and had always been allowed to board the flight, and this would be the case today.  Fortunately for the Governor and unfortunately for Marco the Governors seat was given to the first person on stand-by, Marco!  Marco flew that day and died in the crash that occurred just after take off.    

THE STRANGER AT COURT-SIDE: TOKYO 1988

In 1988 I had landed the role as Chinese Junior National Team Coach.  4 boys and 4 girls were selected from throughout the country and were trained for two months inside mainland China. This was the beginning of China’s emergence back into the international tennis mainstream after years of isolation.  We later played junior ITF tournaments in Jakarta, Tokyo and Hong Kong.

Also on the trip was a Thai team under the management of a local ex-pat Gordon U.E Martin.  Gordon was a true tennis fanatic. Gordon helped put Thai tennis on the map in the early days by bringing  professional tennis to Thailand and starting ITF junior events for the first time. Those early ITF Junior events started by Gordon are still held annually each year. 

Gordon was particularly interested in the history of Asian tennis and after years of research he eventually published the Asian Tennis Encyclopedia.  The book is still the definitive history of tennis in the Asian region.

Gordon and I spent a lot of time together on the trip and he was fascinated by my Chinese players as he seemed to have a real interest in things Chinese.

It was in Tokyo that my story takes place.  One evening as the matches were finishing for the day I was making my way back to the clubhouse and to catch the bus back to the tournament hotel.  It was bitterly cold but I noticed Gordon on the back courts watching a late match being played under lights.  


I approached him and he was quick to introduce me to the only other spectator watching the match.  Gordon explained that he and the stranger had struck up a conversation while the man was watching his son play. They discovered that they knew each other from years earlier in New York.  Gordon used to buy his breakfast at the diner this man worked at and now they had met at courtside in Tokyo!

The three of us stood talking as the man’s son played his first round match.  The boy wasn’t bad either, a bit too laid back to ever make it at the top level but a solid player. The stranger was Mr. Sampras and his son Pete went on to have a fairly decent career winning 15 Grand Slam singles titles.

A few years later I met Pete’s older brother Gus in L.A.  My colleague David Nelson and I were meeting to try and establish a link with their new company Pure Sports Management which we hoped would help manage outstanding players under Bigger Better Tennis (BBT) here in Asia.   

I related the story to Gus that day and he believed that it would have been one of Pete’s first overseas trips as a 17 year old.  His father probably didn't attend another tournament Pete played in for nearly a decade.

Two years later Pete Sampras won the US Open Singles title.

THE KITE BOY

Whenever someone asks me to describe India I usually say “You either love it or hate it, there’s no in-between”.  India is a place where joy and sadness walk hand in hand.  This story illustrates both the sadness of the place and also the resilience of the people who live under the poorest conditions there.

Sunday was a day off at the Britannia Amritraj Tennis Scheme (BAT).  After a long week of training both the boys and the coaches were glad of a day away from the courts.  I really enjoyed Sundays because it meant a sleep in, buffet lunch at the Connemara Hotel and a walk home through the tree lined streets.

There was one Sunday when I remember spending the morning down at Marina Beach with some of the boys flying kites.  Kite flying is a favorite pastime for boys in India, but particularly the kite fights between boys.  The tradition is that boys coat their lines with a mixture of finely ground glass and a type of wax-like glue.  The strategy is to cross your line over your opponent’s line, cutting it before he cuts yours, and win the dog fight.

This Sunday there was a large group of young boys from the nearby slum playing with us.  Every time one of the lines was cut the kite would float down the beach some considerable distance with the wind, and would be followed by boys of all sizes racing to collect it.  This was ok by us because the alternative was us retrieving the kite ourselves!  On this particular day one boy was always first to the kite and we would reward him with a few rupees.  As the day wore on most of the other boys gave up and went home but the “Kite Boy” continued to stay, and collect his reward!

When it came time to go home we were all getting ready to enter the van, changing sweaty shirts and brushing sand off ourselves.  I changed my T-shirt and handed it to the “Kite Boy” as a gift.  His eyes lit up when he realized he was being given my shirt, a white one with a large tennis logo on the front.  Finally we were in the van and on our way home. Eventually we forgot all about the “Kite Boy”.

On normal training mornings we used the beach for fitness runs before the boys went to school.  Starting at 6:10am we would run the length of the beach and back again, quite a tough run in the soft sand.  I was to be leaving India in a short time after 2 years coaching there.  There wouldn’t be too many more of these runs left for me.  

 On this day we had completed our run and were preparing to journey back by van to the BAT house.  As usual, there were several beggars around the van with us asking for money.  None of us took money to the beach for runs so we were ignoring them and while some of the boys were completing their stretch, others had already boarded the van.  I was just entering the van when something that was said made me stop.  One of the beggars had grabbed my attention.  I turned to the boy and asked “what did you say”?  He repeated “my friend sir, he asked me to tell you”.  “Who is your friend” I asked, still confused.   “You gave him a T-shirt sir”.  Then I remembered our day on the beach almost 10 months before.  The Kite Boy who had been our companion that day and had worked so hard to retrieve the kites.  “My friend sir, he told me to come and tell you” the beggar boy repeated.  “Tell me what” I asked.  “He wanted me to tell you he was dead” the boy said proudly, knowing he had my attention now and that I was interested in what he was saying.  I froze on the spot, “what do you mean, tell me he’s dead”? I asked.  “When my friend was lying in bed dying he asked me to find the foreign man who gave him the t-shirt and tell him he was dead”

When I did finally enter the van the boys could see something was wrong.  My face must have been white.  Several of the boys asked me what was wrong.  After I explained what I had been told, and they had remembered the kite boy all that time ago, they too fell into silence, stunned by the sadness of the story.

Even today, when I think of the small boy who had so much life on the beach that day I feel deep sadness.  But perhaps the saddest part of the story is that my one act of kindness concerning an old, sweaty t-shirt was remembered as a highlight in that boy’s life. So much so that he had asked his friend to find me one day and recount his last days alive so that I would know that he was dead.