The `boy’ is ready for bigger things

The year 1998, in retrospect, will give Fazaluddin, called Fazal for convenience, many goose bumps along the years. He won the ITF Future’s event in Chandigarh in January this year, beating friend Prahlad Srinath in the final. He was selected in the Davis Cup team, went to Bangkok for the Asian Games in December and ended the year ranked 563 after starting from zilch.All because, somewhere along the way, he decided to goto Temple University in Philadelphia and chanced upon Andrew Sorrentino.

The year: 1995, when Fazal left behind his Sriram Open title (won in 1993 as a qualifier) and six months training at DHAITA in New Delhi, to study in the US.

“When I went there, I was a boy. He (Sorrentino) toughened me up. He was my best friend, a father figure, my harshest critic,” said Fazal of his coach at the University.

“He pushed me when I was down, paid for my equipment, strings, funded my summer trip to Canada when he could have made money coaching. I owe him everything and can never repay him,” he said.

Little Fazal started by playing ball in Ballygunge (Calcutta) like any other child in soccer-mad Calcutta, and the son of former international and till recently the National football coach Syed Nayeemuddin, had no reason to be different.

But South Club where Leander Paes also trained and Nayeemuddin’s proximity to Akhtar Ali gave him a taste for tennis.

“My father always wanted me to take up an individualsport as he had experienced the politics involved with team sport,” Fazal quipped.

Nayeemuddin was a “competitive” person, who Fazal saw from “close quarters”, and who influenced his career along with Dr Vece Paes, likely to help him with sponsorship, Naresh Kumar and two companies Sabinsa and Sami Chemicals, who came up with their own “modest ways” of giving assistance.Now, with only a semester and half of International Business and Human Resource Administration done, Fazal is gearing up to full time tennis, to catch up with studies later. He has no high goals set but is looking to “crack rankings”, give his best while training with Sorrentino in the US, apart from playing for the country.

“When I heard I was selected for Davis Cup my father called me in US I didn’t sleep for three nights.”Asian Games was a slight disappointent though. “I wanted to do well with Mahesh in the doubles. I feel I let him down. I didn’t live upto my expectations,” Fazal murmured.

He, however, is ready to getup and fight. The year is full of tournaments “the AITA has done a fabulous thing, the money, the exposure is very good,” and with some more conditioning that he says he needs, the Calcutta lad is ready to shine. And thats one way of repaying Sorrentino.