‘You cannot compare me to Rafael Nadal’ : Sumit Nagal


‘You cannot compare me to Rafael Nadal’ : Sumit Nagal
Sumit Nagal

Sumit Nagal is turning eyeballs and grabbing headlines far away from home at the ATP Buenos Aires event in Argentina. The Indian came through the qualifiers and is now scheduled to play in the Quarter Finals against fifth seed Albert Ramos Viñolas

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In a free wielding chat with Olé, Sumit  talked about many things apart from Tennis. Sumit loves the city of Buenos Aires, and the food there. He especially loves the different kinds of meat preparations at the restaurants. 

Sumit, who has won a Challenger trophy at this location, relishes the slow surface here. The slow brick dust surface is something he got used to while playing in the Inter clubs.

Sumit went back into his past and talked about the times when he used to struggle financially to sustain himself. At one point he only had 6 dollars in his account. 

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Sumit also laughs off comparisons with Nadal, the comparisons were because of similar sounding surnames. Sumit’s favourite player used to be David Ferrer. Sumit loved his attitude on court.  

‘ In India people watch the sports that they can play’ : Sumit Nagal 

Sumit Nagal

Sumit says that in India people only have the tendency to watch sports that they themselves can play. He also believes tennis is a much harder sport than cricket, and for Indians it’s expensive too, because in tennis you have to pay for a racket and a membership to a tennis club. 

Twenty three year old Sumit is currently the highest ranked Indian in the ATP Rankings. His current rank is Word no. 150. India, a country of 1.3 billion people only has forty four players present in the ATP Rankings, and only twelve of them are ranked within the top thousand.

But the country has done much better in the doubles, and have had a whole host of Grand Slam winners. Some of the prominent names are Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi, Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna.

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Also Read: ‘Lucky to play in the same era as Roger, Rafa and Novak’: Jannik Sinner