Asia has stepped up, India has not: Senior ATP official

PUNE: If India hoped to produce a top singles player, it needs to put in place a "solid framework" and hosting more Challengers is the way to go forward, says

ATP

Executive Vice President

Alison Lee

.


"The elite players are not going to appear overnight. You need that solid framework. India not having an elite players is a direct result of not having that framework," Lee said during an interaction on the sidelines of the

Tata Open Maharashtra

on Thursday.

"Players like Prajnesh and Sumit have fully taken advantage of the Asian Challengers. Prajnesh played only Asian Challengers last year. So they are very fortunate that Asia has stepped up.

"While India has not, Asia has. But imagine if India stepped up as well, the results will be there for you to see."

Lee said hosting more Challenger and Futures tournaments to compliment the

ATP 250 Series

event in Pune would produce the desired results for the country.

"If you look at Italy and other countries, they have 20 Challengers in a year, and India has two or possibly three. And no Futures," said the Sydney-based Lee.

"India is a big country, and if you need to develop players, you need to have a proper structure - the juniors, the Futures, the Challengers, and the Tour event."

Lee also said that there was a possibility of Maha Open moving back to the first week on the ATP Calendar in 2022 or later as the Tour assessed the success of the ATP Team Cup and its impact on the calendar.

But until that happened, Lee said the Pune organisers should "aggressively" target players ranked between 10 and 40 instead of bemoaning the absence of a top-10 player.

"I think everyone needs to manage their expectations here. You should be going after players (ranked) 10 to 40. The rising stars. You had top-10 players in the past but that was when you were in the first week. This week, you need to focus on players 10 to 40," she said.