He looked frightfully tiny, played too defensively, and would lose more often than he won. That was when RMV Gurusaidutt first came to Pune for a junior ranking meet in 2006. Playing badminton for a lark and winning state events till he was 12, Guru went through a few prickly teenage years thereafter, when his persistent retrieving would take him up to quarters and semis. But at 16, a turnaround happened in this very city, when he realised he needed to attack during rallies if he had to stay in the game and picked up his first junior title in many years.India’s No 1 junior now, Guru punches above his weight regularly amongst the seniors. He made the quarter-finals at the nationals beating Ajay Jayram, then picked a junior Dutch Open title and added the Commonwealth Youth crown recently, and comes into Pune’s World Juniors as a serious medal hope. His first-round exit in the last edition of the same event appears a distant blur, and national coach P Gopichand insists that alongside Saina Nehwal, his other protégé Guru is one of the best singles attacks from India. But more importantly for the boy, the Hyderabadi has shed his defensive skin, making him a serious contender on good days, rather than a defence stickler in losing causes on bad ones. He idolises later bloomer Roger Federer, but more for the tennis great’s proclivity to attack. “My game’s a lot like Indonesian Yunus Alamsyah, who is very strong defensively, but I’ve had to change my game. I was always good at defence, and I’m most confident of that even now. But anyone can break your defence on a poor day. So, I’m working hard on attack,” he says. The transition was both in the mind and in his workouts. Shadow work to build on his speed, a consciously crafted jump-smash and a weight-training regimen to work on the small frame meant he had added a more animated dimension to his defensive mode. The 18-year-old thinks on his feet — quick feet at that — and junior coach Sanjeev Sachdeva believes that Guru’s positive game makes all the difference. “But how well he develops his strength will shape his future game,” Sachdeva says. Ranked fifth in Asia, he’ll have Thai Thanong Sak and Chinese No 1 Wang Zhang Ming to contend with when the individual events start here.
