Serving Aces

At 17, he earned international fame, winning the 1990 Wimbledon Junior title and becoming numero uno in the junior world rankings.

Apart from his 14 Grand Slam victories in doubles and mixed doubles, this seasoned player is the only one to compete at six Olympic Games and the oldest to win a Grand slam title.

In 1996, some 5,000 of his fans were waiting at the airport in the wee hours to receive him, after his becoming the first athlete from India to win an individual bronze medal since 1952.

Childhood

Leander Adrian Paes was born on June 17, 1973 in Kolkata.  He is a direct descendant of the Bengali poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt through his mother.  His parents were both sports persons— father, a bronze medallist (hockey) at the 1972 Munich Olympics and mother who captained the Indian basketball team in the 1980 Asian basketball championship.  La Martiniere and the St. Xavier’s College of the University of Calcutta were his alma mater.

Paes started playing tennis at the age of five and enrolled with the Britannia Amritraj Tennis Academy in Chennai in 1985, where he was coached by Dave O’Meara. The academy played a key role in his early development.

Career

Paes first won titles at the Junior US Open and the Junior Wimbledon and he turned professional in 1991. After 5 years, at the Atlanta Olympics, he won bronze medal after bowing out in the semifinals.

From 1996, he paired with Mahesh Bhupathi, which proved out to be a winning competition.  In 1999, the duo reached the finals of all four Grand Slams, winning Wimbledon and the French Open. Paes also teamed up with Lisa Raymond to win the mixed doubles event at Wimbledon. The year also marked his ascent to the no. 1 ranking in doubles.

Success continued as the pair won gold at the 2002 Asian Games. In the following years, he featured at many Mixed Doubles events, where he registered wins and tasted defeat too. Paes emerged victorious at the US Open doubles event in 2006. He was chosen the captain of the Indian tennis team at the Doha Asian Games in 2006, in which, he won two gold medals in the Men’s Doubles event (teaming Mahesh Bhupathi) and Mixed Doubles (paired with Sania Mirza). 

In 2009, he won the French Open and US Open Men’s double titles with Lukáš Dlouhý and became victorious at the 2013 US Open men’s doubles, this time with Radek Stepanek.

Awards

Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award, 1996–1997

Arjuna Award, 1990

Padma Shri award, 2001