Dylan Alcott, the quad wheelchair tennis great whose impact on the sport has long-since transcended the court, enters retirement today after his last campaign at the Australian Open, which ended with defeat in the quad singles final against Netherlands' Sam Schroder.

The 31-year-old Melbourne native announced in November that he would call time on his career at his home Grand Slam tournament, where he had gone undefeated in singles since 2015 and doubles since 2018 alongside compatriot Heath Davidson prior to this year.

Alcott departs the wheelchair tennis scene with a trophy- and medal-laden CV – 23 Grand Slam titles, including 15 in singles; three Paralympic wheelchair tennis golds and one silver, alongside a further gold and silver in wheelchair basketball; three ITF World Champion crowns; a total of 43 titles in singles and 30 in doubles; and his crowning achievement, the 2021 Golden Slam – a feat only matched in the sport by Steffi Graf in 1988 and Diede de Groot, who also won all four Grand Slam singles titles and Paralympic gold in 2021.

“Tennis changed my life,” Alcott said. “I owe it everything and what better way than to finish in my home city in front of big, big crowds after the year that we’ve had.”

Dylan Martin Alcott was born in December 1990 with a tumour wrapped around his spinal cord that required surgery within weeks of his birth. While it was successfully removed, the operation left him a paraplegic.

He first took up wheelchair tennis as a child alongside swimming and wheelchair basketball. Such was his athletic prowess that as a teenager he reached the ITF top 100 in wheelchair tennis by the age of 16, and represented Australia in wheelchair basketball at two Paralympics, winning gold aged 17 at Beijing 2008 before adding a silver medal at London 2012.

In 2014 Alcott switched his focus to wheelchair tennis, winning his first Super Series crown at the British Open in July. The following season, he won his first Grand Slam title at the 2015 Australian Open; so began a run that saw him claim 15 of the last 19 Grand Slam quad singles titles, winning at all four majors at least twice.

Alcott and Davidson won four Australian Open doubles titles together between 2018 and 2021, as well as leading Australia to their first BNP Paribas World Team Cup quad title in 2016, then regaining the title in 2018. As in singles, he triumphed at all four majors in doubles, partnering David Wagner to victory at Roland Garros and Andy Lapthorne to titles at Wimbledon and the US Open.

But it was at the Paralympic Games that Alcott was arguably at his most inspired and inspirational. Returning for his third Paralympics at Rio 2016, this time as a wheelchair tennis player, he claimed both quad singles and doubles gold, partnered by Davidson, before returning five years later to again reach both finals, taking silver in the doubles before defending his singles title on his Paralympic swansong.

“How special was it to go out on top like that?” Alcott said following his Tokyo 2020 singles triumph. “I was almost done after Rio, and then it just kept going. I was in a dark place when the Paralympics got delayed because I was done.

“I didn’t think I was going to make it to Tokyo, but I found a second wind, my family and my team got me through. I’m just such a proud Paralympian and proud of my disability.

“I love what the Paralympics represents. It represents more than sport – it represents people with disability succeeding in what they love. It gives us purpose, it gives us a passion, it changes cultures, and it changes perceptions.

“We hope we are changing those negative stigmas that people have about us. People think we can’t do anything, but we can and not just play sports: we can work, we can get jobs, we can be teachers, we can be mums, we can be dads, we can travel, we can be partners, we can have kids – we can do so much. People think we can’t, but we can.

“The kid that got bullied about his disability when he was 13, he’d just be so thankful for the life that he lives. I didn’t think I had much of a life to live. I hated myself. Now I live the best life of anybody I’ve ever met and I’m so lucky and so grateful.”

While Alcott may have hung up his racket, his impact on wheelchair tennis and disability sport at large will reverberate for generations to come. As well as a flourishing media career, his role in changing perceptions is boosted by his many community and business interests. He is the co-founder of Get Skilled Access and Able Foods, a meals distribution company, and runs his own charitable foundation and the music festival Ability Fest, which raises money to support young Australians with a disability.

Alcott’s legacy as a Grand Slam, Paralympic, and world champion has not only entered but rewritten the history books, and has contributed greatly to moving wheelchair tennis into a different cultural plane - and nowhere more than in his home country. Within hours of booking his place in the quad singles final, he travelled from Melbourne to Canberra where he was named Australian of the Year, the first person with a disability to receive the highly prestigious national award.

New ventures and horizons beckon, but wherever life takes him after tennis, he will always be driven by the desire to make a lasting difference for people with disabilities.

“This was my purpose,” Alcott told Tennis Australia on the eve of his final event. “To change perceptions so that people with disabilities could live the lives they deserve to live, and I really wanted to get greater representation for athletes with disabilities.

“Did I think it would happen? No. Has it happened more than I expected? To the moon and back.”