India Tennis Star Karman Kaur Thandi Ready For Battle After Combating Injuries, Fears, Doubts

The fear that injuries will consume her tennis career is not there anymore, and the nights of crying are also over for Karman Kaur Thandi. Competing against Hungary's Panna Udvardy in the ITF W50 tournament here, the Delhi player unleashed her solid ground strokes in a fearless display on her comeback. The sharpness and the control was obviously missing but not the wide grin. She flashed a huge smile after the match which she lost 4-6 1-6 to Udvardy, who featured in top-100 some time back.

After all, Karman had stepped on the the court for a match after 16 long months and completing the contest was also a kind of victory. Especially when, not long back she feared that she will not be able to lift a tennis racquet. She hugged her family members after getting a high-five from her coach Aditya Sachdeva, who is fully sponsored by RoundGlass and trains at its academy in Chandigarh.

There was relief in the air.

Karman had broken into top-200 in 2018, but injuries scuttled her progress and made it a stop-start career for the tall Delhi player.

"I remember there were days when I was crying almost every night for months and months. It doesn't matter how strong you want to be but it does hit you at some point that I want to be out there and play," Karman told PTI in an interaction, sharing the tough times she endured.

"The pain was such that I had those thoughts if I'll be able to lift the racket again or play again.

"It was definitely very tough, the year-and-a-half until I stepped on the court and started playing again." Karman went for her strokes, going for the kill against Udvardy. She did not care if she would lose because of the unforced errors.

"I don't really care about the result right now. I'm very happy that I could