"Rafael Nadal gets frustrated, he never shows it" - Adil Kalyanpur gives firsthand account of training at Spaniard's academy & more (Exclusive)

Adil Kalyanpur is currently one of India's biggest young prospects in singles and doubles. Hailing from Bangalore, the 25-year-old is the 12th-highest placed Indian at 867th in the men's singles rankings and is on the up-and-up. The 6'3" stalwart has achieved more in doubles so far; he picked up three ITF M25 Futures titles last year and also made his mark with a quarterfinal result partnering Karan Singh at the Bengaluru Open last week.

What makes Kalyanpur special is his never-say-die spirit. It is evident once you see one of his matches live. During an important point in the deciding-set super tiebreaker of his Round-of-16 encounter against fellow Indians Manish Sureshkumar and Nitin Kumar Sinha at the ATP Challenger event in Bangalore, he gave an easy ball to his opponents that was put away for a smash.

Point over, right? Not really, as Adil Kalyanpur tracked down the ball as it went well out of bounds. Even if it meant crashing into the sponsors' board. Kalyanpur (and Singh) ultimately won that point and the match. Does this hustle sound familiar? It should, if you have seen Rafael Nadal play.

In 2016, the news of Adil Kalyanpur signing up to practice at the Rafa Nadal Academy came out. The Indian has since put in hundreds of hours of hard work at the Mallorca-based academy, which has helped him build his indomitable fighting spirit.

Sportskeeda had the good fortune to sit down for a one-on-one chat with Adil Kalyanpur at the recently concluded Bengaluru Open, where he talked about his time at Nadal's academy, performing well on foreign land, and the current state of Indian tennis at the foundational level.

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Exclusive chat with Adil Kalyanpur

Sportskeeda: You reached your career-high ATP ranking of No. 322 in doubles last November. What are your goals this year, are they more ranking-oriented or getting more experience as a pro?

Adil Kalyanpur: Well, for the first time I'm at a rank where I can play more ATP Challengers. So the goal is to travel wherever I get in ideally, Europe or the US in the summer, and try to play as many Challengers as I can. So yeah, it's not really a ranking goal. It's more experience because so far my entire career has been pretty much really Futures, so I'd like to be playing a lot more Challengers and that's the goal for this year.

Adil Kalynapur and S D Prajwal Dev pose with their first M25 doubles title (via Adil Kalyanpur Instagram/@adil.kalyanpur)

Sportskeeda: You have been performing well overseas, reaching two Futures semifinals in singles in Rwanda and Thailand. Is funding still an issue for you at this point? Also, how much has the All India Tennis Association (AITA) contributed to your growth?

Adil Kalyanpur: Well, the good thing the AITA is doing is they're hosting a lot of tournaments in India right now, which helps players like me, you know, [to] not have to travel so much. Yeah, the beginning and middle part of this year, there were a lot of tournaments here so we didn't have to travel a lot internationally to play tournaments.

But yeah, funding I guess is an issue in the grassroots level in India. So there's a lot of players that end up dropping out in 10th, 12th grade because there's not enough funding and not a lot of programs that are helping younger athletes come out. So, I guess that's something that we could work on as a country.

Sportskeeda: There has been a long-standing belief that Indian players are lacking in terms of physicality, tactical acumen and lack of a proper local circuit, relative to their Western peers.

Adil Kalyanpur: I think our physicality is okay, it's passable. I wouldn't say it's the best. I mean, you obviously have players like Karan [Singh] and Manas [Dhamne], who have gotten a lot stronger in the last year or two and overall. It has improved. But I still feel like we have a long way to go in order to be able to compete with the best in the world.

Like, when you're up against guys like Djokovic, Alcaraz, you're gonna have to be 10 times fitter than you are right now and I feel like Indians still lack a little bit in that aspect, you know? So I guess we have to put in a lot of work, understand our body type, nutrition is something that needs to be worked on. I think that a lot of players don't really work with a nutritionist that could enhance their physical capabilities.

Sportskeeda: Tell us something about your time at the Rafa Nadal Academy in Mallorca. You would've interacted with Nadal a fair few times by now. What attributes do you take from his game?

Adil Kalyanpur: So I think one of the biggest things I took away from Rafa himself was, what he talks about and how he presents himself when it comes to mental toughness. Yeah, it's not exactly something which [is] 24/7 visualization. It's not some crazy meditation, there's no "force" to becoming mentally tougher. It's just the decisions you take on a daily basis. And I had the privilege of seeing that first-hand. How hard he works, if he misses two balls, what his thought process is like.

Adil Kalynapur trades hits with Rafael Nadal at RNA (via Adil Kalyanpur Instagram)

It's just, you know, get back into the next one. No negative attitude, he never throws his racket. He probably gets frustrated on the court, he never shows it. And he's always [playing with] an optimistic frame of mind, which is something that I hope to achieve in my life, where nothing is really affecting me in a negative way. And if it does, I'm constantly showing up the next day for practice. Yeah, mental toughness comes from knowing you've put in the work. And that's something that I really took away from the Academy.

Sportskeeda: There's been a recent picture of Rafa overlooking Maaya Rajeshwaran Revathi as she trains at his academy doing the rounds of social media. Have you had the chance to interact with her?

Adil Kalyanpur: She's been doing really well and it's awesome to see. I feel like she's the next big thing in Indian tennis and it's going to be exciting the next couple years to see how she does. And I'm sure [at] Rafa Academy, she has access to the best coaches, nutritionists, fitness trainers in the world. So I'm hoping that'll give her the kind of backing that she needs to break into the top leagues in the world.

Sportskeeda: Have you ever run into any ATP pros at the Rafa Nadal Academy? Players like Felix Auger-Aliassime, Casper Ruud and Emil Ruusuvuori used to practice there too.

Adil Kalyanpur: Yeah, I saw Casper Ruud and Jaume Munar when I was there, so I got the privilege of hitting with both of them. And Elias Ymer, or Mikael Ymer, not sure which one it was, but one of the Ymer brothers. So it was nice. Honestly, there's always pro players coming by, Dimitrov was there, I watched his practice session of him and Rafa. Which was really nice because you sort of see the level, how these guys are off the court, what their routines are like. So that way it's quite inspiring to be around those kind of players.