Newly crowned national champion Vishnu Vardhan said over the years the country has seen an increase in number of tournaments but the reduction this year has made the job tough.
“To improve my ranking I had to travel to Egypt, Astana, Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe and Thailand this year and I still couldn’t have a full schedule of tournaments this year. It did workout expensive for me,” he said.
“If we had a similar schedule as last year, I could have expected to finish the year with a higher ranking. Hope we have more tournaments next year so that I can move up in rankings,” he added.
Vijay Sundar Prashanth also lamented the “bad situation”.
“It makes it tougher for Indians to go up the rankings. I am sure state associations and national association has enough money to conduct tournaments.”
The women are worried too. Country s number one singles player Ankita Raina said the situation is bad not only in India but all over the world.
“In India the prize money has come down by almost 40 percent but if you add Asian Tennis Tournament (ATT) prize money then it has come down by 25-30 percent, she said referring to the new initiative launched by the Asian Tennis Federation.
The ATT has two events – USD 5000 and USD 7000 — and in both, they have a separate USD 2000 allowance for the players, to be distributed equally to all 16 main draw players.
