Though Leander Paes has given his nod to play in Olympics with Vishnu Vardhan and has agreed to mentor the youngster, his concern whether his novice partner at the Olympics Vishnu Vardhan had the right shoes to compete on grass, hasn\u2019t gone done well with public in general it seems.<\/p>\n
Paes’ comment created a buzz on the microblogging site Twitter, where the Twitterati slammed him by saying that the quote was completely uncalled for, says a report in Hindustan Times, stating a few quotes from public where they have slammed Paes terming him to be ungracious.
\u201cI’m willing to buy Vishnu Vardhan grass court shoes. But where can I buy Leander Paes some grace?,\u201d tweets one, while another says , \u201cOne does not simply not buy shoes for vishnu vardhan without buying grace for leander pace.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, after days of maintaining a stoic silence on his Olympic participation, Paes said despite being left disheartened by the controversy, he is focussed on playing “sport and not politics”. Paes, the world number seven doubles player, said he had no complaints about being paired with Vardhan, who is ranked lowly in the ATP list.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Paes issued a prepared statement saying he was interested in playing sport and not politics. He eventually opened up about his main concerns heading into his sixth Olympics. \u201cIt is the dream of any young Indian kid to play and no one is going to stop me from that,\u201d the 39-year-old said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have been the only player to qualify directly for the Olympics from India and for me that is a great honour. I have already got an Olympic medal in singles and it is the greatest joy. Every Olympics has some nonsense coming with it. I know how much hard work goes into what I do and people chose to respect it and I am very lucky that most of India does. If people chose to disrespect it then that is their choice,\u201d said Peas, according to a report in The Indian Express.<\/p>\n <\/strong>The row erupted when former partner Mahesh Bhupathi threatened to boycott the Olympics if he was forced to play with Paes, who has now been partnered with Vishnu Vardhan, who has never played in a Grand Slam or competed in the Games. \u201cThe only one that I need to worry about is Vishnu,\u201d Paes said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe poor boy is 307 in the world and I don\u2019t even know if he has grasscourt shoes. So it is like a bit of a tough one. He is a really good kid and I am very happy to play with him whatever the obstacles are that I see they are going to be many,\u201d said Paes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Though Leander Paes has given his nod to play in Olympics with Vishnu Vardhan and has agreed to mentor the youngster, his concern whether his novice partner at the Olympics Vishnu Vardhan had the right shoes to compete on grass, hasn\u2019t gone done well with public in general it seems. Paes’ comment created a buzz […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[376,336,351,203,1196],"class_list":["post-8003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-from-the-newspapers","tag-leander-paes","tag-mahesh-bhupathi","tag-olympics","tag-rohan-bopanna","tag-vishnu-vardhan"],"yoast_head":"\n