From Chennai to China: How Chinese women’s tennis player Fangran Tian swears by her Indian coach Mangal Sriram | Tennis News

So how did an Indian wind up coaching a Chinese? “Nobody wanted to coach her,” he quips. It’s his turn to guffaw. “But I really enjoy working with him. He humbles me when I’m feeling too confident. It’s a bond of 10 years, our families know each other, we go on vacations with them all,” the World No 325, says.

Mangal started tennis at 4 after his father conned him by telling him the sport he was playing was cricket. “My uncle Devaraj played Ranji Trophy for TN, but my father never wanted me to play cricket. He put me in tennis and said this was cricket,” he recalls. He ended up at University of Hawaai, Hilo, playing NCAA with a tennis scholarship, and didn’t particularly want to become a coach. The typical Chennai chagrin of pressure of ambition ruining love for the game, surfaces. “I never wanted to be a coach because you spend all your life trying to be a great player and fail. Then I got into some trouble at University.”

He had a flair for coaching, so he picked up USTA certifications quickly and landed up training at a resort in Bali, Indonesia. It’s when the Chinese Tennis Federation was looking for coaches and contacted USTA, who recommended his name, and he found himself at Beijing’s biggest tennis nursery – the Yuxin Middle School. China has a huge number of female tennis players, some Grand Slam and Olympic champions. “They are independent and strong-minded and have had success for 10-12 years more than their men.” Women’s tennis was a big deal in China. Tian, was one of the many he began coaching and taking to age-group national titles – she was driven, but scared of Coach Mangal’s discipline.

“Now I’m scared of her!” he jokes.

While he taught her discipline, she ensured he turned punctual. “I used to be late everywhere, she taught me to be on time. And I learnt to speak Mandarin fluently because of her,” he says. “He taught me everything about tennis, and my English wasn’t very good back then. He improved that, too,” Tian recalls.

In Mumbai, she was thrilled to get into the main draw and notch a couple of come-from-behind three-set wins. “China builds amazing stadia in the tiniest of places, and it’s all state-of-the-art, maintained perfectly. Tian wasn’t the top junior in China when she started at 10, and there was no pressure from her family for early results. But she was emotionally committed and ridiculously tough. Nothing brings her down. She plays a match and says ‘Next’, after tough losses. Very mature and smart, though bad days in practice can make her sensitive,” Mangal says.

China has imported tennis coaches at different levels from all over the world, especially Spain, France and Australia, and a lot of exchange of knowledge and frequent upskilling happens, which means Mangal is thriving in an atmosphere trying to take his Chinese ward to the next level.

Preseason in Thailand also helped Tian cope with Mumbai’s humidity. “When I met him first I was at one of Beijing’s top schools known for tennis, and he was working on another team but we then got him as head coach. He shaped me as a player, and he’s now family,” she says.