Mumbai, Nov 21 (IANS): The revolutionary 20-point format of the Tennis Premier League (TPL) and the involvement of prominent Bollywood stars, has helped shine the spotlight on tennis in India, in addition, TPL launched a Mobile App earlier this year to further support and bolster the tennis ecosystem in the nation.
The TPL App is a unique and innovative venture by the league that is helping the league organise many grassroots tournaments across India. These tournaments are facilitated through the TPL App that is fast becoming the one-stop solution for the tennis fraternity in India.
The TPL App connects the tennis community across India and allows them to interact with each other. The features of the app also allow tennis players to track their progress. The App is also associated with over 100 academies from various regions of India, where the league plans to organise over 600 grassroots tournaments in the recent future.
The league hopes this will pave the way for various state tennis associations to put structures in place and regularly conduct district ranking tournaments thus putting in an end to the non-ranking tournaments in India.
The App also allows players to find partners in the form of friends, professional players and coaches to help improve specific skills, in turn bolstering the support systems for tennis in the nation. Additionally, it acts as an aggregator for tennis products also helping players find the best tennis equipment on the market for a fair price.
Tennis players in India more often than not have to halt their pursuit of excellence due to a lack of sponsorship, which the TPL App aims to resolve. Since the player’s progress will be tracked by the app, it will allow private sponsors a complete portfolio and database to help them make informed decisions in terms of which athlete they should invest in to help them on their professional tennis journey and will allow players, in turn, to reach out private sponsors for support.
Finally, the app opens the windows for aspiring players to book masterclasses and training sessions with the most elite players from the nation. This, in turn, will help aspiring tennis players to get the best advice as to how they can take their performance to the next level, which will further help develop the next generation of world-class tennis talent from India and at the same time help in generating revenue for the professional players and coaches.
Commenting on the innovative TPL App, Anil Dhupar, AITA Secretary General, said: "Many non-ranking tournaments that are conducted in the country are not registered or sanctioned by AITA. The efforts of the TPL App will only bring all tennis players of all age groups together. It will help boost the popularity of the game with a wider audience. And once the sport is popular, once you have got the data from across the nation, then tennis will start becoming a core sport in the country.
"The grassroots tournaments are the perfect activities that will take place across the country, in small towns and big towns through the app, during which the progress of the players can be tracked with ease. These efforts of TPL will surely make India a powerhouse in the world of tennis."
Sunder Iyer, MSLTA Secretary General said: “In Mumbai we are planning to conduct numerous district ranking tournaments which will motivate the upcoming players and train them to play in the state and AITA ranking circuit. The year-end top players of the Mumbai district will also be awarded and felicitated each year. We have successfully created the Pune District ranking circuit and with the help of the TPL App plan to replicate the same all over Maharashtra.”
Kunal Thakkur, co-founder of the TPL said: "There are a huge numbers of amateur tennis players in India. We plan to form a platform to motivate them to take up tennis professionally. The top players of our TPL App tournaments will be given cash prizes and felicitated during the live telecast of the league each year. We wish for more and more players and academies to join us in this initiative.”
Mrunal Jain, co-founder of the league added: “TPL is fast becoming synonymous with tennis. With our extensive media coverage and promotions, it has garnered millions of eye-balls and with the TPL App we plan to now bring the spotlight on the young and upcoming players of the country. Through the app, we intent to generate sponsorships for local tournaments as well as for the upcoming players of India.