13-year-old creates a buzz winning 4 ITF U-18 titles in a row
BENGALURU: A 13-year-old boy created a buzz, winning four successive International Tennis Federation junior ranking tournaments in the country in March.
Who? From where exactly? The questions floating around the Indian tennis sphere were all about acuity.
Vihaan Reddy, who won successive ITF J30 titles in Bhilai, Dehradun, Gurugram and Madurai, dropped three sets in four weeks of the U-18 ranking events. It was the teenager's first serious foray into the ITF calendar and with that his ranking climbed to 503.
Vihaan's parents - Basannagouda Reddy and Roopavathi Patil - are software engineers based in San Jose, California.
Reddy's love for tennis saw him put a racket in his son's hand at the age of five. The family, from Yadgir in North Karnataka, was living in Bengaluru at the time. They moved to California in 2014.
It was Reddy who taught his son the basics of the game which took him to No.1 in the USTA U-12 section. Two years ago, having taught his son everything he knew about tennis, Reddy enrolled Vihaan in the Eagle Fustar Tennis Academy in Sunnyvale, California. Vihaan now trains with Nick Fustar, a former pro.
Vihaan, who has a younger sister Rishita, aged seven, is being home-schooled. His day, which begins at 7 am, revolves around tennis, two sessions lasting two hours each, with a fitness hour slotted in the middle. Late afternoons are for school work, Vihaan's favourite subject in mathematics.
Vihaan, who turned 13 in December, started playing ITF (U-18) tournaments this year, and is ranked No 5 in the U-14 section in the United States.
A Roger Federer fan, he plays a two-handed backhand and admires the Swiss superstar for his calm on the court. His own tennis is built around consistency.
"I'm quite quick around the court, but I'm not yet strong physically," Vihaan says, "It is my consistency that won me matches in India, playing against players who are 16 and 17 years. In the last two tournaments I was attacking more. After the second tournament, I realized I was tiring and so I started trying to finish rallies quickly. I had more tournaments to play, you don't want to be tired at the start of the tournament."
Vihaan, who flew back to the United States in the weekend, will focus on a training block for the next few weeks, after which he'll play a couple of USTA tournaments before returning to the ITF Tour.
