Joining other top tennis players, India's Leander Paes on Sunday has decided to donate his prize money in the USD 380,000 Chennai Open tennis tournament, beginning at Chennai on Monday, for the tsunami victims.
"I always help children and lot of orphanages and like other visiting tennis stars, the whole week I will play for the tsunami victims and the prize money that I will earn will be donated for this noble cause," said an emotional Paes.
Paes, who was at the tennis stadium at Chennai for practice, said, "Chennai is like home for me since I spent a valuable five years here. We cannot fight nature ... It is our very own beach [Marina], when we were in the Britannia Amritraj Tennis Trust and used to train for four days a week."
On his future plans, the Indian ace said: "Tennis is my passion and I am happy that I came back into the game after my health problems [brain lesion] last year."
"I have regained my ground on the court and off it. I am really looking forward to 2005. I will be playing throughout the 30 weeks in tournaments," he said, adding, he had found a new doubles partner, Nenad Zimonjic from Serbia and Montenegro.
"Of course, I will continue my partnership with Martina [Navratilova] for mixed doubles. It is awesome to play with her," Paes said.
Paes, who skipped the Chennai event last year will be playing in both singles and doubles this year. In singles, Paes, a wild card entrant, will take on Yen-Hsun Lu of Taipei and in doubles, seeded two, Paes and Zimonjic will play Jean Francois and Gregory Carraz of France in the first round.
Bhupathi and Paes won the doubles titles four times, and in singles Paes' best effort in seven appearances as a wild card, was a semi-final loss to the then top seed, Patrick Rafter, the ultimate winner of the title in 1998.
India's Mahesh Bhupathi, Jonas Bjorkman of Sweden, Rainer Schuettler of Germany, among others, have earlier agreed to donate their prize money.
