Chasing high 10s: For, world champion shooter Rudrankksh Patil, a year to consolidate early gains

A 10 is a holy grail in many sports. It vaulted Nadia Comaneci into a different stratosphere, elevated Anil Kumble to legendary status, and etched 15-year-old Chinese diver Quan Hongchan’s name in Olympic hory.
It’s a score that defines perfection and is a stamp for greatness. But in shooting, a 10 is just basic. It’s why Rudrankksh Patil once threw a fit and vowed to become so good that he’d never have to settle for ‘mediocrity’. He became obsessed with it: woke up at ungodly hours to begin his practice before the sun would rise, spent hours at the range, simulating match situations, set lofty goals and concentrated so hard that everything else apart from the 0.5mm wide bull’s eye, placed 10m away from him, would become a blur.
Perfection in this sport is a 10.9 – a shot that is very nearly the centre of the target. “And our main target at the start of this year,” his coach Ajit Patil says, “was to shoot high 10s when it matters.” In the final of the year-ending championship, the ISSF President’s Cup, this month, here’s what Patil’s shot grouping looked like: 10.6, 10.6, 10.8, 10.3, 10.9, 10.6, 10.5, 10.1, 10.0, 10.9, 10.7, and 10.6. “It was great,” the coach gushes. “A miracle.”

A miracle he’s pulled off twice over.
In October, during the World Championships, each of Patil’s 15 shots in the gold-medal match was a 10-plus, with the lowest being a 10.3. In the 60-shot qualification series in Cairo World’s where he shot a total of 633.9, which no Indian had managed before, Patil had just five shots below 10.3, but all of them were more than 10.1. It’s hard to find a sporting equivalent of this – perhaps an eagle on all 18 holes in golf (hole in one would be a 10.9, which he routinely manages as well), or winning a dozen consecutive crossbar challenges in football come close.Patil, this year, became a world champion, a world number one and also earned a quota for the Paris Olympics. In a year where the country’s shooters flew below the radar after the ground beneath their feet shook following the Tokyo Olympics debacle, the 19-year-old shooter from Thane held out hope.
The grouping of Rudrankksh Patil’s shots during the gold medal match of the President’s Cup. Each of his shots was a 10-plus, helping him win the title. He had shot similarly during the qualification round and title match of the Worlds.
Indian shooting, in the last decade, has seen its fair share of teenage wonders. Saurabh Chaudhary, Manu Bhaker, Divyansh Panwar… the l is exhaustive. Many of them are at crossroads in their careers. But it’s the ability of Patil – who was inspired India’s teenaged army of shooters and learnt the finer nuances of the sport watching them shatter records and win medals – to shoot 10-plus scores almost at will, that make him the real deal, his coaches attest.
A reluctant shooter – he quit the sport only a month after starting it as a 13-year-old – Patil began his journey at a dimly-lit shooting hall with manual targets in the basement of a school. Initially, he was stumbling his way across – he didn’t get the basics of handling a rifle, didn’t know how to assemble lanes and, this one time when he reached a final, Patil simply copied whatever a friend standing next to him, did. Within months, he somehow was competing and started winning; first at local events followed national-level meets. It was at one such national school competition that he met Ajit Patil – a Kolhapur-based coach who had previously worked with veterans such as Tejaswini Sawant and Rahi Sarnobat – who’d leave everything behind, including his family, to ‘polish a rough diamond’ moving to Thane. “What we are seeing today,” Ajit says, “hasn’t happened overnight. We have spent every single day of our lives reaching this far. And it’s just the beginning.”

Suma Shirur, the national rifle coach, says Patil’s curiosity and open-mind set him apart. “Talent alone isn’t enough always. What’s helped Rudrankksh from last year to this year is his ability to learn and keep an open mind,” the Dronacharya Awardee says.
Shooters, it’s often seen, are creatures of habit. They find their rhythm and routine, and stick to it fearing that the slightest of changes in technique, strategy or even equipment would impact their performances negatively in a sport of fine margins.
Patil, Shirur noticed very early during the national camp, was different. “He is more open to trying things out, learning new things and incorporating them into his game. That’s a huge plus point. We have foreign coaches and high-performance experts in the camp and he’s open to communicating with them. You can see he wants to grow.”
It’s been his trait since the beginning beyond shooting – he’d minutely study photographs of superior venues to reconstruct a similar setting at the shooting range in Thane where he’d train, and he’d watch YouTube videos to design and make his own rifle case.
But it’s the shooting skills that impress Shirur the most. “Something like muscle tension, holding and maintaining it during a match… or breathing cycles and technique. Small things like these make a difference. These are skills you develop after hours and hours of practice. He’s obsessed with that part. That’s why he stands out,” Shirur says.
The 2004 Olympics final points to another factor that sets Patil apart – his ability to suffer. Shirur says during the World Cup in Baku, Patil walked up to her and expressed dissatisfaction over the way he’d been shooting – not the scores, but the rhythm and technique. Instead of giving in, however, Patil ‘fought with his technique’ to reach the final.
“The shooter who has the ability to stick to the process even in times of adversity during a match is the one who can go forward,” Shirur says. “That was the day I told him, ‘now you are ready. I am not worried about you.’”
Post a freshman year that saw him dominate almost every event where he took part, be it national or international, Patil’s challenge will be to consolidate the gains in a busy 2023. Most Indian shooters will have to navigate through the tricky year that will see a World Cup on home soil – in Bhopal in March – a World Championship, an Asian Games (which were postponed due to the pandemic), an Asian Championship and the World Cups. All this, while also trying to secure Olympic quotas and also tackling the complicated selection policies at home.
India have won a total of three quotas so far – apart from Patil’s 10m air rifle quota, the country is assured of a spot in trap (Bhowneesh Mendiratta) and 50m rifle three positions (Swapnil Kusale).

For Patil, this means he’ll be able to approach these events with relatively less pressure. “The year 2023 for him will be about working on the basics, fine-tuning his technique and getting stronger in every way possible – physically, technically and mentally – so that he’s ready for 2024,” Shirur says.
And when he won’t be at the national camp, his personal coach Ajit Patil says he’ll do all this and more. “As we have been doing, we’ll do a lot of visualisation, create match situations and set goals…” he says, “…so that when the moment comes during crunch situations, we will be well prepared to score the high 10s.”
As he’s been doing so far.