Background
Leander was born in Goa, India on 17 June 1973. He was born to a Goan father Vece Paes and Jennifer Paes and was raised in Kolkata. Paes is a direct descendant of the Bengali poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt through his mother.
Leander was born in Goa, India on 17 June 1973. He was born to a Goan father Vece Paes and Jennifer Paes and was raised in Kolkata. Paes is a direct descendant of the Bengali poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt through his mother.
He was coached by Dave O'Meara. The academy played a key role in his early development. Leander shot into international fame when he won the 1990 Wimbledon Junior title and rose to no. 1 in the junior world rankings.
Paes showed promise early in his career by winning titles at the Junior US Open and the Junior Wimbledon. He turned professional in 1991. He rose to the number 1 in the world in the junior rankings. In 1992, he reached the quarter finals of the doubles event in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics with Ramesh Krishnan.
He went one better at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, where he beat Fernando Meligeni to win the bronze medal, thus becoming the first Indian to win an individual medal since KD Jadhav won bronze at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics more than four decades earlier.
His first successful year in the ATP circuit came in 1993, when he partnered Sébastien Lareau to reach the US Open doubles semifinal. After having a moderate season in 1994, he reached the quarterfinals of the 1995 Australian Open doubles with Kevin Ullyett. From 1996, he partnered with fellow-Indian Mahesh Bhupathi, which would prove to be a winning combination. Their first year was not a very successful one, especially in the Grand Slams, with a round of 32 finish at Wimbledon being the best. 1997 proved a much better year for the team of Paes and Bhupathi, with the semifinals of the US Open their best Grand Slam result. Paes climbed the doubles ranking from no. 89 at the beginning of the year to no. 14 at the end of the year.
Between 2003 and the present, Paes has increasingly focused on his doubles and mixed doubles game. Leander won the mixed doubles events at the Australian Open and Wimbledon with Martina Navrátilová, both in 2003. Weeks after the win at Wimbledon, Paes was admitted to the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center Orlando for a suspected brain tumor that was later found to be neurocysticercosis, a parasitic brain infection.
Paes and Bhupathi took part in the men's doubles at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. They were eliminated in the quarterfinals by Roger Federer and Stanislas Wawrinka, who went on to win the men's doubles gold medal. Later in 2008, with Cara Black, he won the 2008 US Open mixed doubles title.
In 2009, he won the French Open and US Open Men's doubles titles with Lukáš Dlouhý and was the runner-up in mixed doubles at the US Open.
He began the 2010 season in good form, again winning the Australian Open mixed doubles title with Cara Black. This was the pair's third consecutive Grand Slam final and the fourth overall. The 2010 Wimbledon win with Black made Paes India's leading Grand Slam winner, ahead of his ex-doubles partner Mahesh Bhupathi, with a total of 12 grand slam titles.
Quotations: “I always seem to rise to the occasion whenever pushed against the wall".