Mahesh Bhupathi (born June 7, 1974, Chennai, India) is an Indian tennis player who was one of the most dominant doubles players in the sport’s history. With his victory in the mixed doubles event at the 1997 French Open, he became the first Indian to win a Grand Slam title. He went on to win four men’s doubles and seven more mixed doubles Grand Slam titles.
Bhupathi started playing tennis at a young age, encouraged by his father, who also trained him. He had an outstanding two-year career at the University of Mississippi, earning singles and doubles All-America honors in 1995, and he began his professional tennis career that same year. He was India’s national champion in 1994 and 1995, as well as a member of the Indian Davis Cup team from 1995 to 2011. In 1997 he became the first Indian to win a Grand Slam title when he took the mixed doubles French Open crown along with Japan’s Rika Hiraki.
Bhupathi began a fruitful doubles partnership with countryman Leander Paes in 1994. In both 1997 and 1998 the duo captured six Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) doubles titles out of the eight tournament finals they reached during each year. In 1999 Bhupathi and Paes advanced to the finals in all four Grand Slam events; they won in the French Open and at Wimbledon but lost in the Australian and U.S. Opens. That year saw the pair ascend to the number one ATP doubles ranking, but personal problems between the two soon led to the dissolution of their full-time partnership. The pair did play together on occasion over the following years, including at the French Open, which they won for the second time in 2001. Bhupathi took five ATP doubles titles each year in 2002–04, including a U.S. Open championship with Belarus’s Max Mirnyi in 2002. However, his play fell off, and he soon stopped being consistently ranked in the ATP doubles top 10.
Bhupathi was even more successful in his mixed doubles Grand Slam career. He won five mixed doubles Grand Slam titles in 1999–2006 with five different partners, among them France’s Mary Pierce, Slovakia’s Daniela Hantuchová, and Switzerland’s Martina Hingis. In so doing, he won championships in the three other Grand Slam tournaments (in addition to his French Open title in 1997), giving him a career mixed doubles Grand Slam. He added to his tally with Australian Open (2009) and French Open (2012) mixed doubles championships while partnering with India’s Sania Mirza. Bhupathi retired from play in 2016. The following year he became the non-playing captain of the Indian Davis Cup team.
Bhupathi and Paes received one of India’s greatest civilian awards, the Padma Shri, in 2001.