The young Indian tennis player won the
2015 Wimbledon boys’ doubles title along
with his Vietnamese partner Lý Hoàng Nam,
defeating pair of Akira Santillan and Reilly
Opelka in the final. With clinching that title,
he became the sixth Indian player to win a
junior Grand Slam title.
He made his first appearance in Davis Cup
in the 2016 World Group Playoff tie against
Spain in New Delhi.
knocked out of 16 tennis tournaments at the
first round itself and he laid blame on change
in support staff for the poor outcomes.
But later he began to train with Serbian coach
Milos Galecic at Paine in Germany and results
have started to show. Somdev - one of the
best counter punchers India has produced -
had also trained with Milos.
Nagal’s journey towards success was not
a cakewalk. In 2017, he was dropped from
the squad of Indian Davis Cup after reports
surfaced of him missing practice session in
July 2016 at Chandigarh citing a hangover.
He also once allegedly took his girlfriend
along with him for a tourney trip without
authorities’ consent.
But 2019 saw a turnaround in fortunes.
Nagal came into the US Open qualifiers
confident, backed by terrific results during
the Clay court season. Consistent results
on the Challenger Circuit meant that he
broke into the top-200 for the first time in his
career.
He had started the year outside the 350
brackets and had to overcome a difficult
period, encountering injuries but came back
strong.
Mahesh Bhupati, India’s Davis Cup
captain, was the first person to spot Nagal’s
keenness towards football and supported
him to make it as a profession.
Mahesh Bhupati said the match against
Federer was a career-defining moment for
the 22-year-old, who grew up in West Delhi.
However, Nagala couldn’t build that
success in the beginning as he was
SEPTEMBER 2019 | WWW.WISHESH.NET