February 21, 2026
tournament Tennis Guide, BangaloreSeven months in — my first tournament
Doubles: Runner-up · Singles: Round Robin
I signed up for a two-day open tournament seven months after picking it back up after a decade away. I had no idea what I was walking into. By the end of day one I had a runner-up trophy. By the end of day two I could barely stand.
I first played tennis as a child — two years of training, then a decade of nothing. I dropped it the way children drop things when something else pulls harder. In July 2025 I picked it up again, the way adults pick things up when they decide to: abruptly, with more commitment than is probably sensible. By February I was at the court six mornings a week and had signed up for my first open tournament — the Tennis Guide Annual Tennis Tournament, held at my own academy.
I did not know what I was doing. I knew how to hit. I had been working on depth, on keeping the ball past the service line, on not shortening my swing at the last second. I had court sense in the way that a seven-month player has court sense — enough to feel the shape of a rally, not quite enough to trust it under pressure. I signed up anyway.
Two weeks before the start I fell ill. A week in bed, a week of recovery — by the time I was back on court I had one week left to prepare. I trained through it. Whether that was sensible or stubborn is a question the tournament would answer.
Day one — doubles
The first day was open doubles. I partnered with Sumit. We were playing on courts I train on every morning, which I had assumed would help. It did not — familiarity with a surface does not transfer to familiarity with competition. I had never played a competitive match before, and I did not know how I would respond to the scoreboard, to the net-cord at 4-4, to the opponent who was clearly better than me and knew it.
The first match settled me. We won it comfortably — the kind of win where you leave the court thinking that was not representative of what this tournament is going to be. I was right.
The second match was harder. We lost. I don’t think I played badly; the other pair were simply more coordinated, quicker to the net, tighter in the rallies. I walked off court and tried to figure out what had actually happened. The loss was the most useful thing that occurred on day one.
The third match we won. That put us through to the semi-finals.
The semi-finals we won with ease — more easily than I expected, which put me in a state of mild suspicion going into the final. Easy semi-finals often mean the final will not be.
The final was not.
It went to a super tiebreak. I don’t remember many of the individual points — competitive tennis compresses time in a way I had not anticipated, where full sets exist in the memory as impressions rather than sequences. What I do remember is the tiebreak itself: the kind of point-by-point accumulation where the score is the only thing in your head, where muscle memory either holds or it doesn’t, where you find out who you are at 8-8. We held to 9. They held to 10. We lost 10–8.
We finished second.
I collected a trophy. I do not have strong feelings about trophies in general, but I have strong feelings about this one. It is the first piece of evidence that I belong on a tennis court in a competitive context. That is worth more than the object.
Day two — singles
Day two was open singles. I was exhausted in a way that I had not properly anticipated. Seven months of early-morning training had given me a baseline fitness, but tournament doubles is a different kind of effort — the short recovery windows between points, the sustained concentration, the adrenaline of a close final. By the time I arrived on day two, my legs were heavy in a way that no warmup was going to fix.
I lost both singles matches.
I do not think I played well. I do not think I would have played well even without the fatigue. Singles exposes the parts of your game that doubles lets you hide — the second serve, the return when you’re late, the decision-making in a rally when there is no partner to cover a gap you left. Every gap I had was visible. I was too tired to close any of them.
What I did not expect was the response from the people I played against. Both opponents came to me after each match and said something. One said my ball was heavy for someone who had been playing seven months. The other said I had a good eye. I don’t know how to evaluate compliments from people who just beat you, but they were specific — they had noticed something — and specific observations from strangers are worth keeping.
What I learned
Seven months is not long. I know this. I am not under any illusions about where I stand in relation to players who have been at this for years. But the tournament showed me something I needed to see: the gap between training and competition is real, and it is not only technical.
I had trained under pressure in the sense that my sessions were demanding, and I had been working at things that were genuinely difficult for me. But competing against a stranger in a final is a different kind of pressure — it has stakes that a training session cannot simulate, and I did not know how I would respond to it until I was in it.
I responded reasonably well. My shots held. My first serve held well enough. I did not collapse at 8-8. I was also clearly limited — the range of shots I have is still narrow, the tactical reading of an opponent is still developing, the singles game I have is the beginning of a singles game rather than a finished version of one.
The runner-up finish in doubles tells me that the consistency I have been working on is real and usable in competitive conditions. The singles result tells me I have a lot of work still to do, and that fatigue management is a skill I need to take seriously before the next one.
There will be a next one.
Tennis Guide Annual Tennis Tournament · Tennis Guide Academy, Bangalore · February 21–22, 2026. Doubles (with Sumit): runner-up. Singles: round robin. First tournament after seven months of training.