Awardees in Tennis are nominated from two categories: Lawn Tennis and Table Tennis. In India, there are some such games that are not that much popular yet they are quite well known and have been played extensively in most of the parts of the country.
The game of tennis is amongst is played all over India in the State and National level and very largely in the school and colleges. This is probably the main reason why Indian Tennis players got success in various competitions in the national and international level and they also became able to enter their names in the winners` list. To encourage the players, Government of India introduced the prestigious awards. The tennis players were awarded in two categories: Tennis and table tennis. One such Award is the Arjuna Award.
Arjuna Awardees in Tennis
Ramanathan Krishnan was the first tennis player in India who won the "Arjuna Award" in the year of 1961. The other awardees are Naresh Kumar, Jaidip Mukerjee, Premjit Lall, Vijay Amritraj, Nirupama Mankad, Ramesh Krishnan etc.
Arjuna Awardees in Table Tennis
In the very first year of the award"s inception in 1961 J.C. Vohra won it for his extraordinary skill and successful performances. He was followed by G.R. Deewan, U. Sundararaj, F.R. Khodaiji, Mir Kasim Ali, G. Jagannath and K.F. Khodaiji, N.R. Bajaj etc.
In 2010, Rohan Bhopanna won Arthur Ashe Humanitarian of the Year Award. In 1999 Mahesh Bhupati and Leander Paes won ITF World Champions in Men doubles. In 2005, Sania Mirza won Women"s Tennis Association Awards for her remarkable performance in Tennis.