Nishesh Basavareddy on deciding to turn pro | ATP Tour

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Basavareddy’s big decision: How #NextGenATP star is relishing life as a pro

American sealed maiden ATP Tour main-draw win Tuesday in Auckland

January 07, 2025

Making big life decisions can be tough for anybody, let alone for someone still in their teens.

Yet Nishesh Basavareddy is remarkably composed when he speaks about his thought process before opting to leave college and turn pro in early December. The 19-year-old, who spent two years competing for the Stanford University Cardinals before a late-2024 surge helped him charge to a spot at the season-ending Next Gen ATP Finals presented by PIF in Jeddah, feels his increasing success made his decision inevitable.

“I think over the course of the summer and the fall there was a lot of thought, but I knew that if I qualified [for Jeddah] and with me also having a main-draw wild card for the Australian Open, that just made the decision a lot easier,” Basavareddy told ATPTour.com. “Knowing that I was going to be playing the bigger tournaments and getting close to the Top 100, that made it a pretty easy decision then, but it was never easy to leave behind college Tennis and my team at Stanford.”

While the decision to attend college or not in the first place is one that many young people face, choosing to leave further education to pursue success in the dog-eat-dog world of elite sport is not. Student athletes are in a somewhat unique position, especially given that there are no guarantees when it comes to a pro sports career, the early days of which can be especially rocky and represent a stark contrast to the relative stability of college life.

It is for that reason that Basavareddy sought guidance from more experienced heads before making the switch.

“I was definitely talking to people about the decision,” he recalled. “James, my agent, the coaching staff, and Rajeev [Ram] really helped me a lot. He left after a semester at the University of Illinois, so he helped me kind of understand what to expect if you do this and turn pro. But they were all supportive of my decisions, so that made it easier to make a decision.”

The overwhelming catalyst for Basavareddy’s move was a stunning stretch of form on the ATP Challenger Tour after the 2024 US Open. He won of 28 of 34 Challenger matches from September to November, lifting titles in Tiburon and Puerto Vallarta in the process. Having started the year as the No. 457 in the PIF ATP Rankings, he ended it at No. 138.

“I feel like having consistent results at Challengers post-US Open definitely gave me a belief that that’s something I can replicate month after month, and at each tournament,” said Basavareddy. “I think that’s probably where I saw the most improvement in my game, just the steady improvement throughout the year in a lot of aspects of my game.”

Basavareddy earned his first tour-level win and maiden triumph against a Top 50 opponent by defeating Shang Juncheng in Jeddah. He has carried that confidence into the 2025 season, during which he has already qualified for his first ATP Tour main draws in Brisbane and Auckland, respectively.

In Brisbane, he pushed Gael Monfils to three sets before falling in the first round. On Tuesday in Auckland, Basavareddy raced past Francisco Comesana 6-2, 6-2 to set a second-round clash with defending champion Alejandro Tabilo.

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Although he is now facing top-level opponents on a weekly basis and focusing on the first full year of his pro career, Basavareddy is not likely to forget his college days in a hurry. The Carmel, Indiana native understands the role his time at Stanford has played in his development.

“When I finished high school, I was only 17, so I was still young, and now with the Challenger wild cards and everything, I was sort of able to skip a step and didn’t have to play [ITF World Tennis Tour] Futures, really,” he explained. “I was able to get a lot of high-level competition for two years in college, so I think it was definitely beneficial because I was able to get straight into the Challengers this summer and then go off from there.

“I think that was a huge benefit, and also just meeting a lot of great people, that was a lot of fun.”

The social joy of college life aside, Basavareddy will for now also miss out on another off-court benefit of being a student athlete: earning a degree. Yet completing his studies in Data Science remains a goal for the American, even if he has to wait until his pro tennis career is over, meaning he is not worrying about what he has left behind.

“While I’m out on Tour, I won’t be studying, just because Stanford doesn’t allow online classes,” said Basavareddy. “But once I’m done, I’m definitely planning on going back and finishing my degree. I have about 15 months left.

“Obviously [turning pro is] a big step in my life but knowing that I always have college to fall back on [helped]. I think that was one of the reasons why I went to college in the first place. So I still have that, if I ever need a degree or want to do something outside of tennis, or post tennis. But being on Tour now, I would say the feeling is more excitement than anxiety.”