Since August this year, Ankita Raina has travelled to six countries, 10 tournaments and undergone at least 40 Covid-19 tests. She has also earned her rewards - winning five ITF titles this season, three of them in doubles. The latest one came in Dubai last weekend. In fact, she didn't have a playing partner until two hours before the event's signing deadline. She is now back home in Ahmedabad after extended weeks of doing the one thing she hates - eating take-outs.
"Normally, I go out to eat or find an Indian place," says Ankita, India's highest-ranked women's singles tennis player, "but this time I had to get food delivered quite often. I don't usually prefer takeout meals so it was quite a challenge for me, I would either not be hungry by the time the food arrived or gradually lost my appetite. From my travels, I've learnt that the food you eat can have a huge impact on how you feel during a tournament."
In Dubai, the 27-year-old also had the added challenge of switching from her stronger backhand side to the deuce court since her Georgian partner Ekaterine Gorgodze is left-handed and more comfortable playing on the ad side.
"Despite a decent doubles ranking and a couple of tournament wins at the start of the year, I couldn't get an entry into some of the tournaments since the draws were small," says Ankita. "A lot of new factors like getting visa, letters and test results in time too came into play. Usually, we hit up fellow players on social media to check if they want to pair up in the doubles, but this time even basic decisions were tougher because you didn't always know how steep the cut-offs were going to be. I didn't want to just sign in to enter the tournament. I wanted to play to win. The last couple of tournaments I tried getting in just to gain some matches but that attitude didn't help.
"Luckily for me, Ekaterine couldn't make the draw cut-off with the partner she'd originally signed up with, so she switched. We were the last team to get in." The Indo-Georgian pair knocked out second seeds Kirsten Flipkens and Andreja Klepac in the quarterfinals.
Ranked 180 in singles and touching a career high of 117 in doubles after Sunday's win, Ankita looks at her doubles CV as a way of exposing herself to varied styles, opponents and improving her transition game in singles. It is also likely to fetch her a spot at next year's Olympics as Sania Mirza's women's doubles partner. Sania will be able to use her protected World No. 9 ranking and pick a partner of her choice for Tokyo.
Singles, Ankita maintains, remains her primary focus and she lists breaking into the top 100 among her immediate goals. Doubles is a means to it and not an end in itself. "My doubles has always been good and complemented my singles game. It has specifically helped develop my net skills. Sometimes it can be a challenge to play singles and doubles in higher-level tournaments, but so far, I've managed to juggle both. Of course, partnering Sania at any tournament would be quite an opportunity. I hope to get through the Australian Open singles qualifying before that."
She lost in the second round of qualifying in Melbourne last year and is still chasing a maiden Grand Slam main-draw appearance.
Over the past five months, Ankita has flitted between courts in Czech Republic, France, Portugal, Germany, USA and Dubai, but travel, she says -- with its all-new rigmarole of tests, quarantine regulations, masks, paranoia of crowds and touching surfaces -- is no longer fun. What travel took away, though, was on occasion compensated by surprise hospitality. In Macon, USA, the Indian couple who owned the hotel she stayed at sent her steaming dabbas (boxes) of home-cooked Gujarati meals everyday.
Unlike in WTA tournaments, ITF events don't have bio-bubbles set up. In Dubai, Ankita had the head coach of the Hemant Bendrey Tennis Academy in Pune, where she trains, accompanying her. "Though there were no rules against it, I avoided going out since we were being tested often. There were some players who tested positive at the tournaments I travelled to. You end up carrying a bit of fear. In some events, even if a coach tested positive, the player would be disqualified and players testing positive have to quarantine for 15 days. It would be an awful waste to have spent so much and travelled abroad and not get to play a tournament. I didn't want to risk that at any cost."
Under the new Covid protocols, the ITF stipulation that disallows players who lose early in tournaments from practicing at the venue has been a cause for inconvenience and needs a look-in, says Ankita.
"Getting the chance to practise was a problem. If you lost early, they wouldn't let you enter the venue and for the next tournament you are allowed to practise at the courts only a day before the event starts. So technically, if you finished on Tuesday you have nowhere to go or practise till Saturday. I hope this changes."