Sumit Nagal: It is normal to have a year when you do not perform
Sumit Nagal has not had the most fruitful 2018 seasons with the Indian failing to defend his Bengaluru Open title. He is still optimistic about the upcoming season though.
“In tennis, it is normal to have a year when you do not perform as you are expected to. It will just take a month or two to get back. I think I am good enough [not to be in the] 400s for a long time,” Nagal told PTI.
He had to shift bases in Spain due to coaching changes and that impacted his training regime. “Javier had a different vision. It took us time to start trusting each other on tennis courts but that trust never came, maybe because I was not performing well. It could have been my fault, or his fault. It just did not click,” he explained. “There were some patterns where he wanted me to hit, say C before a ball, but I wanted to hit B. Then there were shoulder and hip injuries. I don’t know why. So if I am injured, what will he do?”
Did he make a bad choice by refusing to play the Davis Cup tie against Serbia in September this year? Nagal clarified, “I never refused to play the tie. When I got the first email in June, I was still injured. I did not know how my shoulder was going to be. I told them (All India Tennis Association) that I was not available for the tie. My shoulder got the better end of August. Then Yuki [Bhambri] pulled out and I get an email that I was in [the team].”
“If I were playing for myself, it would have been different but I was playing for the team. Playing individually, I can stop any time but in Davis Cup I can’t do that. That’s a bad choice if I do that.”
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