The low point of Brian Kelly’s 38 games as head coach at LSU came in Gainesville two weeks ago, with a third consecutive loss and two heated sideline exchanges with his players.

The first sideline interaction looked familiar: Kelly got in the face of wide receiver Chris Hilton with a stern lecture that featured a couple of expletives. The second was different: Kyren Lacy, the team’s leading receiver, seemingly startled Kelly when he yelled at his coach after another failed LSU possession.

The loss to Florida snapped Kelly’s string of seven straight seasons with at least 10 wins, dating back to his time with Notre Dame, and feels indicative of larger issues at LSU. It’s difficult to look toward 2025 and project a significant turnaround for the Tigers — especially after five-star quarterback Bryce Underwood flipped his verbal commitment from LSU to Michigan late last week.

Kelly’s first season included an SEC West title and win over Alabama, and his second featured a Heisman Trophy winner and 10 victories. But the Tigers (7-4) head into their regular-season finale against Oklahoma playing out the string on a disappointing year.

“It’s just not up to the standard. It’s been patchwork,” a person long affiliated with LSU football said.

Almost three full seasons after Kelly made the audacious decision to leave Notre Dame to chase a national championship at one of the SEC’s most volatile superpowers, it remains to be seen whether he fits the job and can effectively recruit and coach the players the Tigers need to reach that goal.

The Athletic spoke with more than a half-dozen people who have ties to LSU and Kelly for this story. Most were granted anonymity to speak candidly about how Kelly’s tenure at LSU has gone and whether the marriage can be successful.

LSU’s last three coaches — Nick Saban, Les Miles and Ed Orgeron — had all won national championships by the end of their fourth seasons in Baton Rouge. Kelly ran toward, not away from, that standard upon his arrival.

“I want to be in an environment where I have the resources to win a national championship,” Kelly said in the spring of 2022. “And I came down here because I want to be in the American League East,” a reference to the hyper-competitive Major League Baseball division that features the Red Sox and Yankees.

Instead, Kelly will enter Year 4 still searching for the right combination of assistant coaches and with a roster that looks more like the early stages of a rebuild than one ready to contend in the toughest conference in the country.

From the moment LSU athletic director Scott Woodward made the surprising move to pull Kelly from Notre Dame on Dec. 1, 2021, with a 10-year, $95 million contract, the biggest question was: How would the Massachusetts native fit at the SEC school?

While some pointed to Kelly’s career spent coaching in the North and an awkward foray into a Southern accent — “my FAM-i-lee” — at an introductory appearance as signs that his long track record of success might not be transferrable to LSU, those familiar with the program and the coach say his hands-off and at times detached management style has not matched what’s needed at LSU.

“Brian Kelly’s trying to be the same guy he was at Notre Dame at LSU, and it ain’t working,” a former assistant said.

Last week on the SEC coaches’ teleconference, Kelly was asked by The Athletic to what extent he was still learning what works best at LSU. “I don’t know that it’s as much about me as much as it’s about us, and how we continue to build our program consistently,” Kelly said.

Cleaning house

With the full backing of Woodward, who felt the program lacked structure under Orgeron, Kelly cleaned house when he arrived at LSU. It was an unusually deep cleaning for a power-conference program just two years removed from a national championship. But Orgeron was seen by Woodward as running too loose a ship, and the volatility made it difficult to sustain success. The idea was to start anew and implement a more buttoned-up approach.

About 50 people were replaced, from assistant coaches to support staff, including longtime strength and conditioning coach Tommy Moffitt, now at Texas A&M.

“I think just that first (coaching) staff was not what the staff needed to be, and it probably was trying to be too clean of a break,” a former staffer said.

That appears to have been an overcorrection.

“You lose your way a little bit,” the source long affiliated with LSU said.

After pivoting hard away from Coach O’s regime, Kelly, again with input from Woodward, pivoted back after the 2023 season to try to fix an abysmal defense that undercut Heisman winner Jayden Daniels and a spectacular offense, and to fortify credibility on the recruiting trail close to home after Kelly’s first full signing class had only 10 in-state players.

Corey Raymond, a former LSU player who was part of the 2019 national champion staff, was brought back to coach the secondary. Raymond helped establish LSU’s reputation for elite defensive back play. Bo Davis, another former player who was part of the 2003 national title staff under Saban, returned as defensive line coach.

“I think to recruit Louisiana, you have to have Louisiana guys,” the former staffer said.

In addition, Blake Baker — who had a brief stint as linebackers coach at LSU in 2021, Orgeron’s final season — was brought back from Missouri as defensive coordinator at $2.5 million per year. The defense is better than last year’s version, which was maybe the worst in school history, but it still ranks near the bottom of the SEC.

It was expected for the offense to regress some from the best in the country with the departure of Daniels and two first-round NFL Draft pick receivers in Malik Nabers and Brian Thomas. Instead, the drop-off has been drastic for what appears to be LSU’s more talented side of the ball, led by two offensive tackles with first-round potential and quarterback Garrett Nussmeier.

The offensive coordinator transition from Mike Denbrock, who left LSU after last season to return to Notre Dame, to Joe Sloan, who was promoted from quarterbacks coach to replace Denbrock, has not gone well. The Tigers are ninth in the SEC in yards per play (6.11) and 11th in points per game (28.6).

“Scott Woodward and Brian Kelly made a personnel gamble when they decided to let Mike Denbrock out the door because they felt like Joe Sloan was the answer,” the former assistant said. “The data right now would tell you that that’s not the case.”

Woodward declined a request to be interviewed for this story through an LSU spokesman.

Kelly could very well be heading back into the market for an offensive coordinator after this season.

The BK Way

Kelly has always taken something of a 30,000-foot approach to running a program, and the results show he knows what he’s doing. Kelly has a .725 winning percentage over 21 years coaching in the FBS, which doesn’t include 118 victories in 13 seasons leading Division II Grand Valley State.

But even at Notre Dame, particularly after going 4-8 in 2016, Kelly conceded he needed to be more present for his players, acknowledging they wanted him to be more available and connected to the team.

Changes were made and the Fighting Irish took off on the best run the program had since its glory run under Lou Holtz, bulldozing to five consecutive double-digit win seasons and two College Football Playoff appearances.

“When Brian Kelly’s at Notre Dame, he can be his CEO self. He’s often surrounded by excellent staff members and business just goes on as usual,” the former assistant said.

Thirty years of being one of the most successful coaches in college football has made Kelly confident in his ability to build a winning program. At LSU, he seems to have underestimated the need to adjust.

Kelly brought with him from Notre Dame an accountability system for the players, which rewards and penalizes things such as timeliness, dress code, health and wellness check-ins and taking nutritional supplements. Players are either above the line or below the line, and being below can result in a loss of playing time.

“You can’t be late for meetings. You’ve got to take your vitamins every day. You have to do a wellness check-in app on your phone every day, and for (some of) these guys it’s a foreign language to them,” the former staffer said. “… Installing culture is a great idea, but now the way you’re installing culture is actually creating a culture problem.”

Charles Turner, who arrived at LSU in 2019 for the Tigers national title team and was the team’s starting center in 2022 and ‘23, said he had hardly any personal interactions in two seasons playing for Kelly.

Turner said players had to schedule appointments to visit Kelly, which was much different than Orgeron’s open-door policy.

“For Coach Kelly, I think this is a different dynamic for him. … When I was playing for Kelly the last two years, I didn’t talk to him. I started every game for him. Just, ‘Hey, hi. How you doing?’ And that was really it. We never talked Xs and Os. I never sat in his office and got personal with him. He really never got to know me.”

Turner said he hopes Kelly can get it turned around but added he “might not be the best fit” for LSU.

“He’s definitely a good coach, but as far as championships and all that other stuff, you gotta come a different way with your players,” Turner said. “You have to let your players know that you really got ’em.”

A second former assistant echoed Turner: “If you don’t really know the players, if you don’t know how to come at them, don’t know how to talk to them, don’t know how to build relationships with them — if you’re not involved with them, it’s not gonna work.”

Another source said Kelly makes an effort to try to connect with his players, though it doesn’t always seem to come naturally to the coach.

“I think the (players) that believe in him, believe in him,” the source long affiliated with LSU said. “He’s had to find his way when he first got here because it is a different animal.”

Of the two sideline dust-ups at Florida, Kelly chewing out Hilton drew the most attention.

“I do think he is held to a little bit of an unfair (standard) because people want to see him fail,” the former assistant said.

Kelly alluded to this during an interview with Paul Finebaum on the SEC Network last week.

“I find it kind of interesting that I am the only coach in the country that has conversations with their players on the sideline. But be that as it may, we were having a coaching moment with one of my wide receivers, you know, who is desperately wanting to make big plays for us,” Kelly said.

Lacy initiating an exchange with Kelly was more notable. Whether it was a red flag signaling deeper problems or an isolated incident, it was something not seen much at the college level between head coach and player. Kelly said during the interview he had no issue with Lacy expressing his frustration.

“Unfortunately sometimes the camera’s in our office where we’re working, and that comes with being the head coach at a high-profile institution like LSU,” he said.

Recruiting misses

It was one of the first questions Kelly faced after the move: Would he be able to recruit in the SEC against the likes of Georgia’s Kirby Smart and Alabama’s Nick Saban? Kelly and his initial staff were short on recruiting ties and institutional knowledge of a talent-rich state where battles can be fierce.

New Orleans native and longtime SEC assistant Frank Wilson was the one notable addition to the first staff to build those Louisiana connections, but Kelly put Brian Polian, who had been a key member of his staff at Notre Dame, in charge of recruiting.

Kelly himself has never been as hands-on and immersed in the recruiting process as might be necessary to compete with SEC machines, where a top-10 national class might rank closer to the middle of the conference than the top.

“You sit down with these parents and these guardians and these people that are around these kids, and a big part of their decision making is, ‘Who do I trust? Who gives off this vibe that, you know, I want my kid to be with?’ And I think BK probably struggles there a little bit. I think they bring him in as the closer, and I don’t know that that’s his specialty,” the former staff member said.

LSU’s recruiting classes under Kelly haven’t been poorly rated. The 2022 class he mostly inherited was ranked 12th in the country by 247Sports’ composite rankings, because it only had 15 players. The stars were offensive tackles Will Campbell and Emery Jones, tight end Mason Taylor and linebacker Harold Perkins Jr., all juniors who could jump to the NFL after this season.

Almost half that class, seven players, has already transferred out.

LSU’s first full recruiting class under Kelly in 2023 ranked sixth in the country in the 247Sports Composite. Only 10 of the 26 signees were from Louisiana high schools. Only 15 members of the class are still with the team. Most notably, five-star offensive lineman Lance Heard from Bonita, La., transferred to Tennessee, where he starts.

The class that should be the backbone of next year’s LSU team has so far produced four significant contributors, led by linebacker Whit Weeks. Instead, there is a glaring hole in the roster.

“We didn’t need to go to all those other places (outside LSU’s traditional footprint) to get guys. We’ve got guys right here. I think you had arrogance, and that’s what happened. It set us back. There’s no doubt,” the source long affiliated with the program said. “(Polian) was still recruiting like he had at Notre Dame.”

Of course high school recruiting isn’t the only way to improve a roster these days. LSU found a Heisman winner in Daniels in the transfer portal in 2022. Two of the team’s best players this season, edge rusher Bradyn Swinson and receiver Aaron Anderson, were portal additions in 2023. Still, LSU under Kelly has not shown the capacity to transform the roster through transfers the way SEC rival Ole Miss has done under Lane Kiffin. Though Kelly’s biggest win this season came against the Rebels, who have shown portaling to the championship can be a perilous path.

There are also questions about how well LSU is keeping up with the competition when it comes to name, image and likeness compensation for players.

“Some of it has been the misperception that this place is rolling in dough, when the reality of it is they are losing recruits because they’re simply being outbid,” one of the former assistants said.

That appears to be the case for what might turn out to be a bigger loss than anything that has happened on the field this season. Late last week, Underwood — who was primarily recruited by Sloan — decommitted from LSU after 10 months. Underwood is reportedly set to receive an NIL deal worth millions over multiple years for going to Michigan.

Back in May, Kelly lamented LSU coming up short when portal shopping: “We were in the market, in the transfer portal, looking for defensive linemen. It hasn’t fared very well, quite frankly, because we are selling something a little bit differently. And that is, we want to recruit. We want to engage, build relationships. We want to develop, retain, and have success. We’re not in the market of buying players. … And unfortunately, right now, that’s what some guys are looking for. They want to be bought. … We’re not going to go out and buy players.”

With revenue-sharing with players on the horizon, and possibly less emphasis on booster-funded NIL deals, the system might be moving in Kelly’s favor.

What’s next?

Despite dissatisfaction at LSU — there were some “Fire Kelly” chants coming from the student section early in Saturday’s 24-17 home victory against Vanderbilt — Kelly will not be ousted anytime soon.

“Nothing happens without him being the head coach because it is an economic problem that they cannot solve,” a second former LSU staffer said.

Woodward gave Kelly a 10-year guaranteed contract, and the buyout currently sits at $64.5 million. That goes down by $9.5 million annually.

It’s easy to look at the declining results and apparent trajectory of LSU football and conclude Kelly will enter Year 4 on a hot seat, with a roster unable to compete for a Playoff spot. Economics might force patience, and not everybody believes this situation is irreversible.

“I think where LSU’s in a good spot is BK is Scott’s guy. Scott is BK’s guy, they’re gonna work together. (LSU) President (William) Tate’s supportive. They do actually have the pieces in place right now, they just don’t have the roster in place,” the former staffer said.

A victory over the Commodores is no cause for celebration at LSU — more of a temporary respite after three weeks of mostly bad news and a little something to back up the signs of progress Kelly insists he sees.

“Based upon the feedback that I’m getting from (weekly meetings with) our leadership council here, we’re right on where we need to be in terms of building the foundation of our program,” Kelly said last week. “We have to continue to recruit. Our players are playing hard. They’re playing with the right kind of attitude. But this is the SEC. And the talent is real.”

(Top photo: Meech Robinson/ The Athletic; Photo: James Gilbert / Getty Images)

Italy has retained the Davis Cup with a 2-0 victory over the Netherlands in Malaga, Spain.

Matteo Berrettini laid the foundations with a 6-4, 6-2 victory over Botic Van de Zandschulp, before Jannik Sinner defeated Tallon Griekspoor 7-6(2), 6-2.

“We are very happy to be back here holding this trophy. It feels like being in Italy,” Sinner told the BBC on court during the celebrations.

With world No. 1 Sinner widely expected to beat Griekspoor, it had been down to van de Zandschulp — who beat Rafael Nadal in the last match of the 22-time Grand Slam champion’s career Tuesday — to win the first rubber in the hope of setting up a deciding doubles tie.

Instead, Berrettini used his prodigious serve and forehand to brush aside the Dutchman, reminding the world that he is a former world No. 6 and Wimbledon finalist after a torrid couple of years with injuries and illness. He has a 6-0 record at this year’s Davis Cup, with five singles victories and one in doubles, teaming up with Sinner to win the quarterfinal decider against Argentina earlier this week.

“My level never really left, it was more when you are struggling physically and mentally, it’s not easy to play your best tennis,” the current world No. 35 said on court after his victory.

Sinner went into his match against world No. 40 Griekspoor with a 5-0 head-to-head advantage, despite losing the first set in their two previous meetings. Griekspoor put Sinner under heavy pressure early on, seizing on a few second serves, but the Italian’s brilliant defense helped him escape.

After trading eleven service games, Griekspoor kissed what should have been an easy putaway slice off the top of the net to go 30-30 when it should have been 40-15. Instead of folding, a brave serve-and-volley move and an ace took him to a tiebreak, just as he had managed against Carlos Alcaraz earlier in the week.

Also as against Alcaraz, Griekspoor faded in that tiebreak with two poor backhand errors and the match faded with him.

Despite a burst of energy at 1-2 down, during which Griekspoor hit two stunning passing shots and a ridiculous pick-up volley to break Sinner’s serve and move 30-0 up in the following game, Sinner eased through the second set. He became the second men’s player in the Open Era to record zero straight-sets defeats in a season since Roger Federer in 2005 by beating the Dutchman in two sets.

Italy is the first country to retain the Davis Cup since 2013, when the Czech Republic won it for the second year in a row. It now holds both international team tennis trophies, after a Jasmine Paolini-inspired team beat Slovakia 2-0 to win the Billie Jean King Cup Wednesday night. Italy has also secured a five-year deal to hold the ATP Tour Finals until 2030, with Turin to host in 2025; the city is in contention for 2026-30 but is expected to face competition from Milan.

“If it were not important I would not be here,” Sinner said of the international competitions.

GO DEEPER

Billie Jean King never got comfortable

The ATP Tour now joins the WTA Tour in the tennis off-season until the end of December.

The ATP Next Gen Finals, for the best eight players in the world under 21, begins December 18 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; the first ATP Tour event of 2025 is the 250-level Brisbane International, which begins 29 December in Australia. The WTA Tour event, which is 500-level, begins the same day.

(Top photo: Jorge Guerrero / AFP via Getty Images)

Dr. Rajinikanth and his wife Dr. Padma would regularly play chess together for fun at their family home in India. Always at their side, watching wide-eyed, observing intensely as each piece was strategically moved on the board, was their son, Gukesh. The young boy was captivated by the calculated black and white dance before him.

“He would become fascinated with how the pieces worked,” Rajini tells The Athletic.

Over the next few weeks, Gukesh, still fresh into adulthood, could become the youngest-ever chess world champion. By qualifying for this month’s 2024 World Chess Championship in Singapore, the 18-year-old is already the youngest challenger to compete for the world title.

It has been a meteoric and surprising rise for a player who, until the summer of 2022, was still solely ranked as a junior. “It just happened by accident,” says Rajini, a surgeon. His son’s success wasn’t preordained, he says. Neither he nor his spouse, who is a microbiologist, had planned for or dreamed of their son becoming a phenomenon in the sport. “We never realized he was a special talent,” he explains. “It was the schools, teachers, and coaches who started to tell us, ‘This kid is talented, you should pursue more’.”

Starting on Monday, Gukesh will play titleholder Ding Liren, 32, of China in the best-of-14 classical games match that could last until December 13. For the first time in 138 years, two players from Asia will contest the final.

Gukesh, from the city of Chennai on the Indian south coast, a hotbed for chess talent, won the eight-player 2024 Candidates tournament in Toronto to set up the chance to become the first teenager to win the world title. Aged 17, in his first appearance at what is essentially the final round of World Championship qualifying, he overcame the odds and got the better of five more celebrated players — all with higher rankings — earning his title shot with five wins, one loss, and eight draws to finish with a score of nine out of 14 (one point for a win, half a point for a draw, and zero for a loss). Should he triumph in Singapore, he will become India’s second world chess champion after Viswanathan Anand.

Perhaps such success shouldn’t have been surprising given the records he broke as a child. Still young enough to be included in the International Chess Federation’s (FIDE) junior world rankings, he is the world’s top-ranked junior male player in classical chess, the longest format of the sport.

That he could beat the defending champion isn’t in the realm of fantasy, either. Gukesh, ranked fifth in the world in this month’s classical rankings, is the in-form player. Ding, currently 23rd, has had a difficult reign as world champion, taking a nine-month break from the sport last year for mental health reasons. He hasn’t won a classical game since January and has only played 44 classical games since becoming world champion.

“I am worried about losing very badly. Hopefully it won’t happen,” Ding said to chess app TakeTakeTake in September. At this week’s press conference, Ding said he wasn’t at his peak but said he was at “peace” and would review his previous best performances for inspiration.

Ding does, however, hold the better record in the pair’s head-to-head classical meetings, winning two and drawing once, and his peak FIDE rating of 2,816 is higher than Gukesh’s (2,794, reached in October).

But Magnus Carlsen, the five-time world champion who opted not to defend his world crown in 2023 but is still ranked as the world’s best classical player, has backed Gukesh to win, and urged the importance of Ding making a fast start.

“Ding cannot lose the first game… from what we’ve seen from Ding for the last one-and-a-half years, I don’t think he’ll come back from losing the first game, so I agree, hesitantly, that he’s going to be the first person to win a game, but I’m very uncertain,” he told chess.com. The Norwegian added: “The only way there’s going to be a low number of decisive games is that Ding gets chances and keeps missing them. We could see a bloodbath.”

‘Gukesh D’ as he is known, started playing chess at the age of seven, winning various junior tournaments before becoming, at the time, the second-youngest grandmaster, aged 12 years, seven months and 17 days. Grandmaster, awarded to players by governing body FIDE for life, is the highest title outside of world champion; today there are more than 1,850.

This year, he became the third-youngest to reach a FIDE rating of 2,700 after claiming two gold medals at the Chess Olympiad — a biennial international tournament that was held in Budapest, Hungary, and he is the youngest player to achieve a rating of 2,750.

Gukesh said his youth could be viewed as a negative and a positive heading into the final, but at this week’s press conference Ding said his opponent played with maturity “in many aspects”. Known for being an aggressive player, Gukesh, who recently revealed he was a fan of the sitcom Friends, is one of a number of young players making a name for himself in the sport. Ding recently decribed the new generation of players as fearless. “There are a lot born after 2000, they play fearlessly and are willing to try different strategies that the previous generation might not have,” he said, according to The Straits Times.

Gukesh is welcomed at Chennai International Airport after winning two gold medals at the FIDE Chess Olympiad (Photo by R. Satish Babu/AFP via Getty)

One of the coaches who told Gukesh’s parents about their son’s special ability and helped his development was Indian grandmaster Vishnu Prasanna, who coached the prodigy from 2017 to 2023.

They first met after Vishnu hosted a small training camp for students from Gukesh’s school, Velammal Vidyalaya, which has a great reputation for producing chess talents. Developing a strong mentality was a big focus point for Vishnu. “We discussed a lot of non-chess stuff about mindsets and how people in extreme sports behave,” Vishnu tells The Athletic. 

“We talked a lot about Alex Honnold (the American free solo climber) and many extreme athletes and what kind of mindsets they try to keep. I always emphasized that chess techniques come and go and can be played around with, so there is no one right technique. But there can be a right mindset that promises performance, and that is the difference between players rather than the chess itself.”

His parents never involved themselves in training, instead making sure life outside of the sport was settled. But, with the approval of Gukesh’s parents, Vishnu, experimenting with his approaches, resisted the use of computer or chess engine assistance until Gukesh was a grandmaster, the aim being to encourage Gukesh to think on his own.

Chess had a deeper impact, too, on the teenager. “He used to be very naughty,” says Rajini.

“He was the only child so whatever he wanted he had to get it sometimes. He used to have all these tantrums but once he started chess he became very observant, how he is now. He started becoming more calm, patient, and observant. Chess has changed him.”

Playing chess can cause mental fatigue because of the concentration required. Yet, Gukesh’s appetite for the game once saw him play 276 games in 30 tournaments across 13 countries over 16 months while squeezing in 10am-5pm sessions with Vishnu in between competitions.

The longest game at a World Chess Championship was in 2021 between Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi, taking seven hours and 45 minutes. Such mental focus can take its toll. After the ‘Moscow Marathon’, a World Championship contest between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov that lasted five months and 48 games, Karpov told a Russian magazine he had lost 10kg (22lb) in weight.

Gukesh could become the first Indian world champion since Viswanathan Anand (Photo by Marcus Brandt/picture alliance via Getty Images)

In Singapore, each classical game will follow the time control of 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game. From move 41, a 30-second increment will start. Players must remain poised, balanced and consider their moves deeply. A score of 7.5 points or more will win the world title. If the players are level after 14 classical games, a tie-break will be played on December 13. The right mindset is paramount, says Vishnu.

“It’s probably the biggest stage that anyone would get to, it’s all about nerves when you get there,” he says.

“He has been thriving under pressure. So far, he has always delivered in moments where he has a lot to lose and when things are hanging by a thread.”

History is on the line, and so too is a lot of money. The total prize pot for the World Championship is $2.5million, with each player earning $200,000 for each game they win. The remaining prize money will be split equally between the players. This is a significant hike from the €48,000 ($50,489 at current currency conversion) Gukesh banked from winning the Challenger tournament.

Even if Gukesh remains calm under the Singapore spotlight, his parents will not be relaxed. Padma does not watch her son’s matches because the experience is too stressful. Instead, she will wait for the results to come in.

“I also want to do that, because it is too stressful for us, but it is too difficult to stay away so it’s like a hide-and-seek. So I just watch once every half an hour or hour and just see what position he is in,” says Rajini.

Tournaments have taken Gukesh, accompanied by his father, all over the world. There have been sacrifices, but the family have few regrets.

“Two-thirds of the year we were travelling for tournaments — his mother got very little time to spend with us. That is one thing we regret. Otherwise, we are very happy with how things turned out and we are very fortunate,” says Rajini.

Coach Vishnu saw the pursuit of greatness first-hand. “There is no clear path to recreate what he has done,” he says. “A certain hyper-focus and sacrifice of a regular childhood, a regular school life, and a regular social life of a teenager, you give up all that and focus on the main thing and that is to get better at chess.”

There are increasingly more chess prodigies, but Gukesh has worked persistently to fulfil his potential. “I had no doubt he was going to do well but, still, he exceeded expectations,” says Vishnu.

Gukesh is following in the footsteps of a great: five-time world champion Anand, now the deputy president of FIDE and also from Chennai. Fittingly, Gukesh overtook him in the chess rankings last year to knock him off the top spot as India’s highest-ranked player, a position he had held for 37 years (although Arjun Erigaisi, in fourth place, currently holds that honour).

Anand dominated an era, including winning four consecutive World Championships between 2007 and 2012.

“Playing the world championship and winning the Candidates is trying to fill Anand’s shoes, which is something my generation tried but failed to do,” says Vishnu, 35.

“So it is very inspiring that Gukesh is close to putting India back on top of world chess, looking back and thinking, ‘That was the kid who was coming and training with me’.”

(Top image: Andrzej Iwanczuk/NurPhoto via Getty Images; design Eamonn Dalton)