A 17-year-old Somdev at the International Tennis Federation junior event in Calcutta in February 2002. He won the tournament, gaining his first international title. See Sport

Jan. 10: His opponent had just closed out the second set of the final with three straight aces. But TV replays suggested two of these were wide.

Did you realise it then, Somdev Dev Varman was asked after the match. Yes, he did. Why had he stood Zen monk-like then, when even top players react with “passion”?

Going into the final set, he didn’t want any “negativity”, the Indian replied. “Getting mad wouldn’t help me win the next point. I had to let go and move on, stay focused on what I could control.”

A star had been born that day in May 2007, when the 5-foot-11 Guwahati boy with a Calcutta connection became the first Indian to win the US college championship.

Stardom, however, had to wait till this week when the 23-year-old caused serial upsets in the Chennai Open with his baseline slugging before reaching the final with a walkover from German Rainer Schuettler today.

“To see a thousand cheering for me, kids looking up to me…. It’s very special,” Somdev said yesterday. A parent wrote on her blog her child would “like to be like Somdev”.

The $450,000 Chennai Open may be a low-prize event, but Somdev is only the second Indian reaching an ATP final in recent years — after Prakash Amritraj at the Hall of Fame in the US last July. It perhaps marks a passing of the torch from the ageing Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi.

Former player Naresh Kumar said: “He can become a top-notch player, but needs to work on getting more power into his shots.”

Somdev, descended from Tripura’s tribal nobility, was born to Pravanjan and Ranjana Dev Varman in Guwahati on February 13, 1985. Within months, income-tax official Pravanjan was transferred to Calcutta. Ranjana told The Telegraph: “We lived in Gariahat till 1993. Somdev studied in St Mary’s, Hindustan Park, till Class II.” Then they moved to Chennai where the boy picked up the racquet at nine. “Most players start at 5-6,” he admits. But nobody in the family played tennis — he’d watched it on TV and got hooked.

The two-time US college champ had a late start as a professional too because he wouldn’t quit studies. “My education is very important to me,” he said after the 2007 title.

When he did turn pro five months ago, after graduating in sociology from the University of Virginia, he won both the singles and doubles in his first two $10,000 Futures events in the US. NRI websites buzzed but few in India took notice of the Davis Cupper, the highest ranked Indian male at No. 202, till he scalped a former world No. 1 and the current No. 26 in Chennai.

Calcutta remembers him, though. Somdev trained under Akhtar Ali from the age of 12 to 14 at Calcutta South Club. “His hard work and sincerity impressed me,” Ali said. “He was steady and had good legs.”

Somdev’s first international title, the ITF Juniors, came at Dakshin Kalikata Sansad in 2002. Two years later he won the $10,000 ONGC Men’s Futures at Saturday Club.