Without a cue, the sad puppy dog face breaks into a dazzling smile.
"Life is tough," says Marcos Baghdatis.
With his hair flopping on the face, Baghdatis pulls the neck-piece across his mouth and restlessly slides the small golden crucifix along the thin chain.
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Far away from his home in Limassol in Cyprus, between the heady highs and lows of tennis, it is something he holds on to.
"My brother gave it to me when I was 13," says Baghdatis.
Life, as he knew in the sunny Mediterranean town of Paramytha -- meaning fairytale -- with his big family and friends, came to an end when a tennis scout from Paris spotted his precocious talent. His father Christos packed him off to the cold French capital to groom him into a top tennis player.
The 14-year-old Baghdatis cried and begged his father on phone to let him come back.
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"He could get to where he is because he sacrificed a lot in life," says one of his too-many-to-count cousins Fidos Charalambous, who accompanied him to the Chennai Open last week.
"He left his family for tennis when he was very young, it was not easy, but his father thought he had the talent to make it to the top-50, that's why he was sent off. We were all sad then but it has worked out well for him."
'It was tough for him,' Patrick Mouratoglou, who owned the academy in Paris, was quoted as saying. 'He was living 100 metres from the sea (in Cyprus), weather is great, he had all his friends there. He came to Paris, it was more professional; winter is tough. He didn't speak the language.'
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Text: Deepti Patwardhan | Photographs: AFP/Getty Images
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