We remember meeting Shivika Burman on a sunny December morning in 2017 at The Tennis Tree (1, Sir William Jones Sarani, Park Street area, next to Peter Cat), her tennis academy that she had just launched with fellow tennis player and coach, Farid Alam. “We really want this to do well. This is our dream, our passion. Since we have opened, we haven’t taken a single day off,” the Ballygunge girl, for whom tennis is life, had told us. She’d had to take the hard call of retiring from the sports she’d played all her life earlier that year.
An under-16 national tennis champion, Shivika was the number one junior tennis player in the country with wins in nine consecutive tournaments in the US, on her CV. Her professional tennis career had taken her to more than 50 countries. Shivika had competed in the junior grand slams, was a part of the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games squad, the captain of the Indian Junior Team and a former Women’s Fed Cup Player.
When Shivika started The Tennis Tree, it was awash with dreams and a certain determination to bring her unfulfilled desires to fruition. She swept aside all her disappointments to nurture champions of the future. “I felt Calcutta was lacking something like this. I always wanted to coach. From my experience, I didn’t get anything. So, I thought I wanted to do something so that I could give back to the sport and help the kids,” she had said.
Nearing a decade of her journey with The Tennis Tree, now, when you speak to Shivika, there’s a strange satisfaction in her voice. She still hardly takes a day off and quite literally lives on the court. She has honed her coaching skills to become an ITF Level 2 and USPTR-certified coach. She was one of the two coaches for the ITF Grand Slam Player Development Programme’s touring team. Last year, she did the WTA coaches course in Hong Kong and Australia, the first Indian coach to be a part of that programme. “The sport is evolving so much. Every coach will have their own way of doing things, but it’s very important to kind of just keep yourself updated,” said Shivika when we caught up with her on a November afternoon.
If the journey began with about 30-40 kids, The Tennis Tree now works with 400-500 kids, across different batches. “The kids, they join at three+, four, so we have a separate group for those below six. Then, below eight, we have a separate group. Then we have a group that’s between, you know, eight to 10. Then there are higher age groups. We have some who’ve also turned professionals. They’re either playing on the men’s circuit or the women’s circuit. A lot of our kids have got scholarships and they’ve gone to the US, to play in college,” she added.
The academy has produced two national champions, and there are five kids in the top five across categories. “One big reason The Tennis Tree has been successful is our strong focus on grassroots development. Over the last eight years, we’ve built a clear structure and pathway for kids, starting from munchkin tennis and mini courts, then moving into solid grassroots training, and finally progressing into the high-performance batch. This step-by-step system has made a huge difference. We had kids who started in our grassroots batch, which was like age six to seven, and now these guys are top 10 in the country, top five in the country. So, it feels really good that all the work that we’ve put in over the years is paying off. We’ve worked almost 15 hours a day and seven days a week. I mean, we start our day at five in the morning, we finish at nine-10,” said Shivika.
The Tennis Tree currently has about 15-18 coaches. They started with a team of five. It has also expanded. Besides the Sir William Jones Sarani address, they are now present in Calcutta International Club on Shakespeare Sarani and have a presence in IIT Kanpur. A facility in SAI (Sports Authority of India) in Salt Lake opened a few months back. “The Kanpur centre is on autopilot. The Calcutta International Club facility is completely run by The Tennis Tree. The SAI one is in partnership with another company called RT Sports,” explained Shivika.
In terms of size, SAI is their biggest one yet. There are five courts with both clay and hard ones. There is also a fitness facility. Both adults and kids can play at the same time. “So many times, adults come and they want to play, but we can’t provide courts at the same time. So now at least, on the weekends, we have families that come. So the parents play on one court and then the kids are also playing,” said Shivika.
She juggles her time between the two sides of the town, spending a little more time at the SAI academy because it’s new. Besides constantly updating herself, Shivika still goes back to one of her coaches in the US, Raj Lama, for advice, among others. “I keep sharing videos with him of all my players, and I discuss. Most of my friends are from different parts of the world, and a lot of them have got into coaching. We keep sharing ideas. My father (Satyajeet Burman) was my coach, and the way he taught me a few things, I can relate to them. I keep telling him to talk to the parents because there’s so much I feel they can learn from him. What he did for me is not easy. So many times, I see parents losing patience. You have to fall in love with the game. I struggle so much with a lot of parents and young players because everyone wants quick results. If you’re playing a sport, you need to be committed to it. No one can guarantee any results, but as long as you’re committed to the sport and you’re doing it, things will work out,” said Shivika.
We spoke about Amol Mazumdar, who never wore the India Blue but went on to coach the women’s cricket team to a historic maiden World Cup trophy. He never gave up, something Shivika also stressed upon. She is on the court almost 12 hours a day, mostly working with high-performance kids.
“Not everyone is going to become a professional. And that’s not even our goal, but we just want kids to take up a sport because there’s so much sport teaches you. More and more kids are coming in for tennis, but I feel there’s so much more scope. It’s so important to play a sport, whether you’re playing it for 30 minutes a day or two days a week. Tennis is a sport which you can start at any age, and you can play for as long as you want to and at your own pace,” she added.
The Park Street branch has pickleball facilities. “A lot of young parents who started playing pickleball, say, probably playing a sport for the first time in their lives, are realising the importance of playing a sport. So they’re putting all their kids into tennis,” said Shivika.
In hindsight, the last decade has been a joyous one. “Our whole idea was to build a centre where it’s accessible to a lot of people. When I started, I wasn’t even sure if I was going to be in Calcutta for so long, but we’ve received so much love from everyone around. We were patient. We had to put in a lot of work and also to kind of just change the way people looked at the sport in the city,” she smiled.
Her me-time includes an hour in the gym after the morning classes, and Shivika acknowledged the need to slow down. But there are dreams galore. Going ahead, Shivika wants to keep coaching and take up more international projects. “Now that Leander (Paes) is the president of the Bengal Tennis Association and he’s got a lot of ideas, it’ll be great to kind of do something for tennis in Bengal. He’s always been encouraging of everything that I’ve been doing,” said Shivika. She is also the Team Mentor of Gurgaon Grand Slammers, a new franchise in the Tennis Premier League (TPL) whose brand ambassador is Sania Mirza. TPL will take place in Ahmedabad next month.
Her foremost plan, however, remains to build an indoor facility for the monsoon months.
Our conversation culminates in two Rafael Nadal fans daydreaming about a meeting with the champion Spaniard next year. Shivika might be headed to the Rafa Nadal Academy in Manacor, Mallorca, where the 22-time Grand Slam winner hails from. That’s where Maaya Rajeshwaran, the 16-year-old star from Tamil Nadu, trains. “Maaya is doing amazing. Her work ethic and everything… she’s someone I think all young girls in India should look up to,” said Shivika, who has worked with her briefly. Maaya is the youngest Indian to earn a WTA point and made her Wimbledon juniors debut this year.
We say, sign us up for the trip too!