Karan Singh, a young tennis player, faced equipment challenges when he arrived in Hyderabad but still claimed his first professional singles title. With back-to-back wins in Bali and Mumbai, he rose to become India's No. 2 player.

Karan Singh arrived in Hyderabad in January, short on form and shorter on equipment. The rackets he uses come from Austria, and nobody was travelling to India from Europe to bring. He was down to his last two.

"I was only playing with two left. I was stringing the racket after every match," he said, while speaking to Sports Now.

He ended up winning the tournament anyway, defeating Dutch top seed Max Houkes in the final for his first professional singles title at home. Back-to-back titles in Bali and the M25 in Mumbai followed, and the 23-year-old is now India's No. 2 singles player.

"The past five, six weeks I played, it was one of the best weeks of my life so far. When you get that winning feeling, you don't want to stop. You feel like you want to work even harder," he said.

Adjusting and making do is a family habit. With nowhere for his son to train in Karnal, his father rented a plot of land and built the solution itself.

"I'm from Karnal and there are not so many places to train there. So my father was like, we need to do something about it. We rented a land and he ended up making four clay courts there with floodlights. We got clay from, I think, Rajasthan," he said.

He won the U16 Fenesta Nationals that same year, saving three match points in the final. His father had arrived in the stands midway through the third set.

"I got a bit nervous. And then I was like, I cannot lose when he's watching me. So I just went all out and just expressed myself," he said.

Ask him what has clicked, and he does not talk about his forehand.

"You need to believe in yourself before anyone believes in you. People are telling me I can do it, but I was like 50-50. When I started believing in myself 100 per cent, in my game, with my equipment and everything, I think that helped me a lot. I got very calm on court. I was a bit clumsy before, but now I think I'm more stable," he said.

He has done that work largely alone, and also tried a sports psychologist only briefly. He also credits Roundglass, the Chandigarh academy he joined two years ago, for the rest.

"They were like a backbone of my journey. It's a relief for the player that you don't need to worry about anything and you have your team which worries for you," he said.

He won on his Davis Cup debut against Togo in 2025 and was part of the squad that also beat the Netherlands in Bengaluru this year.

"It adds a bit more pressure because you're not just playing for yourself. You're playing for your team, for all the people who are behind supporting you. But I wouldn't say it adds pressure. It just gives that good feeling that you need to do well for the country."

India's best-known players of recent decades made their names in doubles or mixed doubles. Karan, who has an ATP Challenger doubles title of his own, is clear that singles come first and equally clear about why India struggles to produce top-100 singles players.

"We see a player when he already makes it. We don't support the journey of the player; we support when the journey ends. When that player is going through that journey, I think that's the time when people need to come forward," he said.

He also has a message for children picking up a racket and his advice sounds like a description of his own career.

"Work hard, enjoy suffering, enjoy the pain, enjoy the hard work. You cannot be like, I'm tired today. You need to enjoy when you're tired as well," he said.