Maaya Rajeshwaran Revathi returned to the scene of her breakthrough run at the Mumbai Open WTA 125K a year older and visibly different from the teen who had reached a historic semifinal last year. The 16-year-old was kitted out in the latest Nike collection from the Australian Open, was accompanied by her coach from the Rafa Nadal Academy and looked physically stronger after an intense year of matches that she called a mental rollercoaster.
Sadly, she could not replicate last year’s success, going down in the first round to fifth seed Lanlana Tararudee of Thailand 3-6, 2-6. But at this stage in her young career, even this straight-sets loss had potential to show and lessons to learn. As gutting as a first-round exit can be after last year’s run which got her the first WTA ranking points of her career, she did look for ways to learn from the loss soon after the match and showed immense emotional maturity at a tough time.
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“Lots of lessons learned in terms of what I’ve been working on recently. To be honest, I wasn’t very happy with the way I was playing in November-December. But I think I started pretty well here, looking at progress and things that I’ve been working on, I do see a bit of improvement,” Maaya, now ranked 56 in the juniors, said after the match.
“I’m not used to playing someone like Lanlana today. She’s not someone who’s going to give me opportunities to finish the point, I have to run down every shot. But at the higher level, players are not going you those points. So, I think this was a step where I could learn about finding more weapons to beat them, to add more weapons to my game.”
Adding to her game has been the focus for Maaya and her team through the last year, especially once she got to Spain after her scholarship with the Nadal Academy. Some visa issues meant her time there was limited, but she absorbed a lot in her stint there, surrounded by a bunch of pro players on tour and sometimes even Rafa or ‘Uncle’ Toni Nadal watching. This calibre of training is rare for a young Indian tennis player and is transforming Maaya at her core.
At last year’s Mumbai Open, her gym time was limited at 15 years of age; now she is working a lot more on strength and it shows. She has grown taller (natural at 16) built up her muscle mass (with hours in the gym she enjoys) and has a team of people around her to work on different aspects of her game. But coach Polina Radeva, from the Nadal Academy, quickly quips – “Don’t tell her that, please, because we keep telling her that she’s not strong enough.”
“We don’t build a lot of mass at the moment obviously, but it’s one of the biggest objectives that we have for Maaya, because she’s a very aggressive player and to maintain that style, she needs to she needs to gain more strength, both in the legs and the upper body as well. Right now, we’re competing a lot, but hopefully when we get the chance to have a proper training block, we could focus on those things,’ says Radeva.
Maaya has undergone a less evident, but much more notable mental transformation as well over her first full year of intense match time. She was pragmatic last year as well, but now the emotional edge of a top athlete has also seeped in her personality. The teen let out a sigh far older than her age while opening up about how she had not imagined her life would be this complex and how she needs to still grow up.
“The last year was a huge roller coaster for me,” she smiles. “There were moments where I was a bit overwhelmed because, as a 16-year-old, to be honest, I didn’t expect an athlete’s life to be too much like this, you know?”
“I had good ups and then I hit the rock bottom a lot of times, which was tough to accept. When you see for the first time how you [can] play really well and don’t expect yourself to lose in the first round… I don’t mean this tournament but in general, it’s not really easy to accept. I think, I have to grow a bit more much emotionally, in terms of learning from the losses better.”
She was honest, almost brutally so, about becoming avoidant after a brief confidence crisis and credited the people around her for bringing her back from despair. Her early losses at junior Grand Slams – which was a big goal for her 2025 season – could not have helped.
“I had a period of three months in between where I felt like I was not doing well… I was not calling anyone, I lost my confidence. But there were so many people around me who helped me. I am very lucky and very grateful that there were people who were pushing me, saying you’ve done it before, you can still do it again. Without the people around me, it would have been very difficult.”
Maaya is still somewhere in a slightly hazy mind space where losses, even in exhibition leagues, affect her to the point of being hard on herself. As her coach called her, she is a fighter and you can see her trying to navigate this instinct on court, which is a positive in the long term. The heartbreak of Mumbai, or Melbourne 10 days ago, shows that she is still a work in progress, growing in the right direction. “There’s still a long way to go as you saw today, but it’s a good first step to build. I’m happy to see that she’s working and thinking. For me, the most important thing is that she thinks on the court, to have an idea on why the mistakes are happening,” says Radeva.
Maaya calls this time a shell, one which she needs to break out of. “I feel like I’m inside a small shell and if that shell breaks out, I’ll be someone who I really want to be. I feel like to break out I’ll need a lot more experience, I’ll need to compete more. I’m just waiting for that moment when I will be able to break out of that. And once that happens, I think I’ll be good enough.”
With Maaya’s natural calibre and the backing of her dedicated team, she has the potential to be more than good. The junior Grand Slams and WTA 125K and ITF tournament (next week in Pune) wildcards at home are all part of reaching that level soon.
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