Leander Paes: Bringing happiness to people through my game is why I still play

The tennis legend says that after a stellar career that has seen him accomplishing almost everything he wanted to, he still plays as he loves the sport
Prior to leaving for the tie against Pakistan in Kazakhstan, the Indian Davis Cup team assembled for a practice at Delhi’s RK Khanna Tennis Complex. The highlight of the session – for all the fans watching – was stalwart Leander Paes, who was making a comeback to the team, having missed the last tie.At 46, Leander Paes is one of the oldest active players in professional tennis internationally. In fact, someone mentioned that his doubles partner Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan was only two when Leander won the Arjuna Award. The remark drew a smile from the veteran. “I have a very blessed career and it comes from the lineage and genetics I was born with and also from the environment I grew up in,” Paes tells us, referring to his parents Dr Vece and Jennifer Paes, who represented India in hockey and basketball respectively.
Paes attributes his longevity in professional sport to a solid foundation of physical fitness. “Growing up, I wasn’t a tennis player. I was more of a footballer,” he recounts, “I learned to value the opportunity to play for the country from my seniors when I joined the tennis academy in 1986. Everything we did there – eating, sleeping, breathing – was about playing for the country. When you come from a lineage where your parents have both played for the country, it becomes a single-minded focus.”
When he partnered Jeevan to win his most recent Davis Cup doubles match against Pakistan, Paes drew clear of Nicola Pietrangeli with a record-setting 44th doubles win in Davis Cups (Pietrangeli had 43). The record adds to a long list Paes already possesses in a 30-year-long professional career which has seen him win 66 professional titles, including 18 Grand Slams. Paes acknowledges that he has checked all the boxes he wanted to but he still doesn’t want to retire. “There is nothing more to play for except for happiness,” he says matter-of-factly, before adding, “If I look at any Grand Slam, I have won them all, in doubles and in mixed doubles. If I look at it in terms of longevity, I am the only player apart from Sir Rod Laver to have won Wimbledon in three different decades. My team is finding it quite hard to find new events for me to compete in. So really, for the last two years, I have been playing because of happiness. It’s been such a lovely journey the last two years, where I play just because I love the sport of tennis. It’s such a magnificent sport.”
There is one other motivation too for Leander – the love of his fans and the happiness his achievements bring them. He elaborates, “The relationships you cultivate travelling around the world playing tennis is one of the greatest things life has given me. Over the 30 years, my greatest joy has been to be able to bring happiness to people through tennis. We live in a world that moves very fast. I find that creating memories and bringing happiness to people through the stresses of modern-day life is the reason I still play.” The former World No. 1 doubles player says that now, all he wants to do is to leave a legacy of being a world-beater. “It’s good to have won the Wimbledon six or seven times and being no. 1 in the world but if I look back on my career, the legacy I’d really like to leave is that we have proven that we Indians can be world champions, both in the Olympic field and within the sport,” he says.