The day Andre Agassi lost to Arnaud Clement here at the U.S. Open in 2000, RaghavTandon and his kid sister, Kamakshi,got all fired up about tennis and ran out to a hard court near their Toronto home to hit a few balls. Taking Agassi-esque cuts at the ball, Raghav began pounding away, with his game sister running after the shots. But there was some grit on the the courts, and while pursuing one bullet, Kamakshi slipped and did a face plant. She ended up with what she calls an extra, "Jay Leno chin" growing out of her own.
Worse yet, she hurt her left wrist. This is her racquet hand, but that wasn't the thing that really perturbed the raven-haired southpaw; what really freaked her out was that it was her writing hand.
"That was pretty much it for tennis," she now says. "I realized couldn't risk hurting my writing hand."
Well, the WTA's loss was tennis journalism's gain: Kamakshi, who's now 24, went on to study International Relations at the University of Toronto, and then to graduate school for journalism. Many of you know of her from the invaluable website, Court Coverage, that she created while still a student, but here at Tennis magazine we're even more proud to introduce her as our new web editor at Tennis.com.
We all know and revel in the fact that tennis is an international sport, and Kamakshi is a true international girl. Born in Lucknow, India, was a "Unilever" baby (fittingly, given Unilever's current role in the U.S. Open Series). The Tandons then moved, in succession, to England, Egypt, Russia, and Canada. Kamakshi was sent off to boarding school in India (which she found too "militaristic"), while her parents were in Egypt, and then to a girls' school in England (where she found the student life too Lord of the Flies) while her folks were in Canada.
But when she visited them over the summer in Toronto, she took to it (how can anyone not feel comfortable and cheery in the land of the Maple Leaf?) and never looked back. Of course, there was that hockey thing, of which she says, "Ten years and I'm still holding out against hockey. Sort of."
Many of you are familiar with Kamakshi's deft editorial touch. I've always enjoyed the terse and sometimes snarky comments she often adds (along with those signature emoticons) after extracting and linking to a particularly well-written or newsworthy story.
That touch will now be in great evidence, both in the form of Kamakshi's clean prose as well as her fine editorial judgment, at Tennis.com. She'll be the webmistress, shaping how Tennis delivers news, commentary, and the always welcome guidance and vital information that avid players and enthusiasts expect from the mother ship.
When I first met Kamakshi via email, I thought her extraordinarily shy and reveled in teasing her; I once called her a "hottie" in linking to Court Coverage, for which I received this one-line email: I should never speak to you again.
The good news is that she's talking to me again; in fact, we've been sitting side-by-side at the U.S. Open, and enjoying the camaraderie. She shy alright, but also witty in a sly way, and a very astute observer of tennis. Feel free to send her a welcome note; you'll be seeing - and reading - a lot of her in the coming days.