Rectify and revise: Nagal closed his 2025 campaign earlier, to tweak his training and preparation.
| Photo Credit: K. MURALI KUMAR
On December 30, Sumit Nagal put out on X a photograph of him getting out of a car and captioned it: “Thanks for the bumpy ride, 2025”.
It aptly reflected a period during which he did not win a single title and slid from being inside the top-100 in January to No. 277 by December.
In a sense, his whole career has been one long bumpy ride. Injuries, illnesses and below-par form have ensured that he has completed very few seasons without breaking down.
The 28-year-old, however, is hoping that 2026 would be different. He has tweaked his training and preparation methods by closing his 2025 campaign earlier than normal and giving himself a sufficiently long pre-season.
“It is one of the best pre-seasons I have had,” Nagal told select media ahead of the Bengaluru Open ATP 125 Challenger which begins on Monday. “It was five-six weeks long and we worked a lot on my body and tennis.”
The jam-packed ATP calendar doesn’t give a player enough space between tournaments. This aspect appears to have hindered Nagal from building on his highs.
At the 2024 Australian Open, he beat World No. 27 Alexander Bublik. Then, he won the 2024 Chennai Challenger to break into the top-100. And at the 2024 Monte Carlo Masters, he dragged World No. 7 Holger Rune to three sets. But the follow-up acts in 2025 never materialised.
“I’m not very gifted with height [to get a big serve in]. So I need to work a lot on my points. This could be one reason that the body gets tired,” Nagal opined.
“So we are going to do small training blocks throughout the year so that I don’t lose the base [level of fitness and tennis skill]. Earlier, I would play as many tournaments as I could. I am not going to make that mistake again,” he added.
At 28, tennis careers tend to plateau. But Nagal feels he still has a lot left.
“I would love to compete for the next six, seven years at a high level, where I am playing Slams,” he said. “If I don’t [play Slams], I don’t really know. But as of now at least till 35.”
In that quest, a repeat of his title-winning run in the Garden City from 2017 will signal a golden reset.
Published – January 02, 2026 10:32 pm IST
