New Delhi: A patch-up between Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi for the sake of country's Olympic campaign was a bright note to end an year in which senior pros disappointed and youngsters shone in patches.
As the Olympic year beckons, India's medal hopes got a fillip with Bhupathi announcing and Paes endorsing that they are game to shake hands and pair up for the quadrennial extravaganza.
If 2006 ended on a sour note when Lee-Hesh parted ways, this announcement brought smiles on the faces of the game's lovers in the country.
In the year gone by, Paes and Bhupathi were nowhere near winning a Grand Slam, while Sania Mirza missed much of action with injury even though she still managed a career-best singles rankings of 27.
While Paes encountered an indifferent form, particularly in the later part of the year, Bhupathi - like Sania - was forced out of action due to niggling injuries intermittently.
Paes and Bhupathi at least won two doubles titles each, including Master Series, but Sania failed to add to her lone WTA tour singles title.
While much cannot be complained about Paes and Bhupathi, who, having done a lot for the country, are past their prime, Sania still carries a big burden of hopes of a nation of 1 billion.
Her best chance in singles was when she reached finals of Stanford, which was also her first Tier II level final, but fell at the final hurdle.
However, her good run in women's doubles continued as she added four more titles to her kitty.
Unexpectedly, the players who were either written off or never carried much hopes provided something to cheer about.
Rohan Bopanna had a memorable year with his maiden singles challenger win at Dublin and five doubles titles, including three with Pakistani Aisam-ul-Haq-Qureshi.
He also played four finals to take his doubles ranking to 66 from 116.
Tara Iyer won four $10,000 ITF crowns, including three on the trot and Karan Rastogi ended India's 25-year long drought for a clay court title abroad by winning in Morocco.
Tara, however, was exposed when pitted against higher ranked players. She lost in the first round in the WTA Sunfeast Open to Flavia Pennetta and her campaign at three consecutive $25000 ITF tournaments was cut short in the very first round.
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Fitness and consistency, pre-requisites of success in any sport, once again proved be the difference between the Indian tennis players and the champions or good performers from other countries.
Even former Davis Cup captain Vijay Amritraj recently said "the rate of improvement of the foreigners is much more than the Indians."
"The standard has improved all over the world whether it be fitness or in physique of the players. The top-100 rankings of today are comparable to the top-50 rankings of our time," Amritraj said.
Injuries kept chasing Sania all the year, forcing her to withdraw from at least eight tournaments and keeping her away from the court for more than four months.
Sania announced her arrival in 2005 but could not maintain the success and some argued opponents had read her game in the second season.
Throughout the year, Ana Chakvetadze continued to be Sania's nemesis. Sania found her a hard nut to crack as she was outplayed and outsmarted by the young Russian in all four meetings in the gone by season.
Sania's laudable success in 2007 was victories over five top-20 players - Tatiana Golovin (19) and Patty Schnyder (17) at Stanford, Shahar Peer (18) and Dinara Safina (14) at San Diego and Martina Hingis (12) at Los Angeles.
In the process, she also reached a personal milestone of achieving her career best ranking of world number 27 in singles and 18 in doubles.
But at the bigger stage, she was exposed yet again. Her best Grand Slam performance was reaching the third round of the US Open while at all other three Slams she did not move beyond the second round.
For the doubles duo, Paes' best performance at the Grand Slam stage was a quarter-final appearance at the Wimbledon while Bhupathi reached semi-finals at the French Open.
Paes also played three finals and made to seven semi-finals while Bhupathi lost one final and three last four-stage matches.
Among juniors, Delhi boy Yuki Bhambri and Chennai lad Prajnesh Gunneswaran impressed one and all by their extraordinary performance at the National Championship.
Even Doug MacCurdy, a US-based tennis development consultant and former ITF Director, chose both the players for special praise when he watched them in action.
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The 17-year-old Gunneswaran beat the likes of Vishnu Vardhan and Navdeep Singh en route to finals while Yuki stunned Vivek Shokeen and Tushar Liberhan before being tamed by eventual champion Ashutosh Singh in the semi-final.
Both the players showed class and raised hopes to fill the vacuum, which will be created when Paes and Bhupathi will hang up their rackets.
From the organisational point, India was successful in bringing top guns before the local crowd.
Spanish world No 2 Rafael Nadal was the biggest attraction at Chennai Open, which also featured the likes of Carlos Moya and Xavier Malisse, in January.
The Sunfeast Open drew the strongest field in its third edition with two top-12 women players - French Marion Bartoli and Slovak Daniela Hantuchova - in the fray though Sania's withdrawal took the fizz out of the tournament.
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