The girl who is breaking barriers
Sania Mirza's serve won't win any awards for design and her toss is so high you can have a cigarette waiting for it to come down. She is a few biryanis (flavoured rice) heavier that an elite athlete can afford to be and her acceleration on court is more Ford than Ferrari.
But no big deal; this you can teach an 18-year-old. What you can't is chutzpah, and toughness, and Sania Mirza has both. Though when I first saw her, it was hard to believe.
For a while at the Australian Open, and only that, Sania Mirza froze.
You could see it in her awkwardness when matches began, as if the enormity of the moment had short-circuited her brain, as if nerves had locked her elbow and anxiety shackled her feet.
So everyone feels suffocated under pressure, everyone chokes. Even Australian Open champion Marat Safin, he said so himself.
Bolder generation
Mirza, who was turned away by her first coach when six, was now playing in the main draw of a grand slam singles for the first time; a teenager out of Hyderabad was rubbing shoulders with a muscular, glittering Serena Williams. Hell, a choke made sense.
Indian athletes anyway, at least in the past, were known to go a little weak-kneed when confronted by an alien environment.
Raised amid inadequate facilities, poorly travelled, physically out-matched, assisted by inferior coaches, awe followed them on a leash.
But this is a bolder generation, more likely to shrug off the cloak of intimidation, and it is somewhat apparent in Virender Sehwag's audacity, in Irfan Pathan's cool debut in Australia, in Anju George's resolve in the long jump arena.
These athletes, and they are a growing tribe, believe they belong.
It's not something learnt from a coach or found in a textbook, but a self-belief that swirls in an individual athletes' mind. And it is what Mirza has.
Quite simply, Mirza thawed at the Australian Open after the odd hesitant set, she folded her nerves as she does her spectacles, put them aside and embraced the moment.
She let her forehand sing, and her small fist pump, and her mouth grimace; there was a sense she enjoyed this metallic taste of battle and could do with some more.
'Confidence is the key'
Her body language wasn't rude but it was clear: Bring it on.
It is no coincidence that when I asked Mahesh Bhupathi, whose company Globosport manages Mirza, what strikes him most about his charge, he said: "Her confidence is the key and her belief in herself will take her a long way.''
Nirupama Vaidyanathan, once the highest-ranked women's player (No.134) prior to Mirza (now No.131), was his echo: "She believed in herself even before the results arrived. Some people may call it cockiness, but it's very essential in international tennis.''
Mirza is going to need that nerve, because even though she's just entered a new world, India expects the world of her.
There has been much celebration of her at home, and while some of it has been overdone, it is also understandable.
Sporting success is not a familiar friend, and praise accumulates and is then heaped on any sudden achievement.
Mirza has done well to replicate quickly what Leander Paes did just once in his grand slam singles career (a third round placing), yet she remains an apprentice.
It was blurted out in India that she has top 10 potential, and irrespective of whether it is an exaggeration, it is an unnecessary burden for a player only finding her tennis feet.
The fact is she hits a powerful ball, but to watch Maria Sharapova's ferocious duel with Serena, and Lindsay Davenport exchange body blows with Alicia Molik, is to be quickly educated on the distance Mirza has yet to go.
We need to keep our perspective, and she hers.