R. Gopalakrishnan
Executive Director, Tata Sons
On the Tata Open tennis tournament in Chennai

Why did Tata choose to market and promote tennis?
That's because tennis, like the Tatas, has heritage. Tennis was first referred to in writing as early as 1399 in a poem by John Grower. Wimbledon was held in 1877, the same year Queen Victoria inaugurated Jamsetji Tata's Empress Mill at Nagpur. Because like Tatas, for over 100 years, tennis has been vibrant with rich personalities from the theatrical ‘Big’ Bill Tilden to the cool unruffled Bjorn Borg.

Why have you been unable to attract top players like Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras?
Over the past few years men's tennis has seen great equalisation. It is no longer about a handful of players who win the bulk of the tournaments. Instead, of the world's top 100 players, any one can win on a given day. The cut off ranking for Tata open 2003 is 115 the lowest in its history, which means that all entrants are world beaters. The field is of the highest quality, with names like Mark Philippoussis, Guillermo Canas, Paradorn Srichaphan.

Will you extend the tournament to include women's tennis in the future?
Tata's is interested in promoting tennis, and has no desire to restrict women tennis players from the tournament. Tata wanted to host a global event, so we chose an ATP open tour. Unfortunately no women players have been participating in this event.

Tata Sports claims to have nurtured nine world champions, and 41 Asian Games winners. Can you repeat the success with Indian tennis?
When Ramanathan Krishnan reached the Wimbledon semi- finals, many felt that that this was as far as Indian tennis could go. Yet, Lender Paes has won several Grand Slam doubles titles, and an Olympic medal. This is due to his international exposure. We are trying to provide this exposure to our players. Of course, we have no plan to create a champion by a given date. We simply promote tennis because it is consistent with our image and heritage.