User:Ybhavanikumar/sandbox

= Sahaja Yamalapalli =

Sahaja Yamalapalli (born 29 October 2000) is an Indian professional tennis player. She is the former India number 3 and current India number 4 and world number(WTA) 454. She won two professional singles titles in 2022. She is the member of Indian women tennis team for the Billie Jean King Cup (Fed Cup) 2023.

She is considered an aggressive player with powerful ground strokes. She turned pro in September 2021 and finished the year with the year-end ranking of WTA-1414 and has been consistently climbing up the rankings since then. As her current ranking is 456 in the world, she has a goal set to reach top 300 before the end of the year 2023.

Before turning pro, she was playing college tennis at Sam Houston State University, Texas, USA and graduated in May 2021 with a food science & Nutrition degree and finished her college tennis career with an extraordinary performance 18-0 (win-loss) at top 1 line up of the team in the final season.

She played very few tournaments in her junior category and straight away started playing women category at the age of 14 and won 3 AITA women singles titles out of 5 and remaining semis and quarters.

In her college tennis she excelled her game level under the coaching of Robert Hubbard with the overall statistics in dual matches 52-11 (win-loss) and Southland Conference matches 34-3 (win-loss).

ITF Circuit Titles

 * ITF $15K at Nagpur, Maharashtra in March 2022
 * ITF $25K at Gurugram, Haryana in July 2022

Early Life
Sahaja Yamalapalli was born on 29 October, 2000 in Khammam and brought up in Hyderabad. Her father Bhavani kumar Yamalapalli is a private teacher and mother Supriya is a house wife. She was joined by her parents in tennis mainly for keeping her body healthy but gradually she used to play with good focus and determination. Till her 10th standard she had continued her practice at Saroor nagar stadium, Hyderabad and few months at L.B.stadium. After 10th standard she was joined in Sinnet Tennis Academy and took the training under coaches Ravi Chandra Rao and Prahlad Kumar Jain and currently training at PBI (Peter Burwash International) tennis academy, Bangalore under the coach Mr. Cesar Morales.

She attended Geetanjali Vidyalaya school from 5th class to 7th and Vignan Global Gen School from 8th to 10th. And completed intermediate from Siddhartha Junior women’s college and graduated from Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas, USA.

Tennis Career
Sahaja Yamalapalli began playing tennis at the age of 10, turned professional in 2021. Early days she was guided by her father regarding tennis and academics apart from her regular practice. She didn’t participate much in junior circuit till the age of 14. After that she decided to choose tennis as a career and took full time practice without attending the college.

College Tennis (2017-2021)
Sahaja got the under graduate admission into Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas, USA in 2017 (Fall) for having National women ranking 28 and UTR -10 based on athletic scholarship. She took Food Science & Nutrition as a major which could help her maintaining proper diet. Her college coaches Mr. Robert Hubbard and Robin Hubbard played an important role in transforming her game to the next level. She won many awards and rewards in both studies and sports during her college tennis


 * Awarded as a Southland Conference Women tennis player of the year 2019 & 2021
 * Best female sophomore student athlete 2019.
 * Awarded as a Most Valuable Player (MVP) 2019
 * Awarded 3 times as a Southland Conference women's tennis Student-Athlete of the year 2018, 2019 and 2021 for being top in both studies and sports
 * First women’s tennis player who earned ITA national ranking 110 In Sam Houston State University’s history and who is unbeaten in the season with 18-0 record at top 1 line up in her university’s history
 * Ranked No. 18 in the ITA Texas region women tennis players
 * She also became the first player to ever crack the ITA/NCAA national ranking in her University

Professional Career (2021-2022)
Sahaja turned pro in 2021 September by making her first ITF tour to Tunisia for playing ITF $15K tournaments.

She achieved rank WTA-1403 there by reaching her highest Pre-Quarter finals round. After that she played at Cancun, Mexico and improved the WTA ranking to 1293.

After returning to India in Jan 2022 she participated in 4 back to back ITF 15K tournaments in Jhajjar (Haryana), Gurugram (Haryana), Ahmadabad (Gujarath) and Nagpur (Maharashtra) in India respectively. Only in Jhajjar she reached pre-quarter final and lost in first round in next two. But in Nagpur she won ITF $15K singles title by defeating previous 3 tournaments winners Anna Ureke(RUS),winner at Jhajjar; Punnin Kovapitukted (THA), winner at Gurugram and Emily Seibold (GER), winner at Ahmadabad. With this win she improved her WTA rank to 989.

Sahaja participated at Gurugram, India for 2 ITF $25K back to back tournaments In Jun/July 2022 and lost in first round to Karman Kaur Thandi (India) who was the winner of first tournament. But in 2nd tournament Sahaja defeated previous week winner Karman Kaur Thandi in first round and lifted the singles title by defeating better players in other rounds. In finals she defeated Victoria Morvayova (SVK) with 6-3, 7-6.

This win gave her a great jump in WTA rankings and moved 989 to 456 (current highest rank)