Hewett, De Groot and Vink seal year-end No. 1 doubles rankings
While Shingo Kunieda, Diede de Groot and Dylan Alcott have been named ITF Wheelchair World Champions for 2021 after finishing the year at the top of the men’s, women’s and quad singles rankings, De Groot is also among the players to finish the season as year-end No. 1 in doubles, alongside Alfie Hewett and Niels Vink.
De Groot ends the year at the top of the women’s doubles rankings for the fourth year in a row after winning a total of nine doubles titles on the 2021 UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Tour, eight of them coming with fellow Dutchwoman Aniek van Koot as her partner.
De Groot and Van Koot, calendar Grand Slam winners in 2019, won three of the four Grand Slam titles in 2021 and added the women’s doubles gold medal at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games before completing their season with victory at the UNIQLO Wheelchair Doubles Masters.
They end the year as the top two ranked women’s doubles players and with the same points total, although De Groot takes the No. 1 ranking by virtue of having played fewer tournaments than Van Koot over the course of the period defined in the protected ranking introduced in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hewett is the year-end No.1 in men’s doubles for the second year in a row after a season in which he also won nine doubles titles, all of those victories coming with fellow Brit Gordon Reid.
Unbeaten in seven tournaments together in 2020, in 2021 Hewett and Reid became the first men’s wheelchair doubles partnership to win the calendar Grand Slam and although they could only win the silver medal in the men’s doubles at the Tokyo Paralympics, they finished the year by winning their second UNIQLO Doubles Masters title together.
Like De Groot and Van Koot, Hewett and Reid also started their season with a defeat at the Victorian Open in Australia and they also end 2021 with identical points totals, although Hewett has played fewer tournaments than Reid in the relevant time frame covered by the protected ranking system.
A memorable year for Vink and Sam Schroder has ended with Vink a mere 10 points ahead of his compatriot in the quad doubles rankings after the two young Dutchmen combined to win six titles together in 2021. Those six victories included the first Dutch gold medal in the quad doubles at a Paralympic Games, Vink and Schroder’s first Grand Slam title together at the US Open, two Super Series titles and then their first UNIQLO Doubles Masters title together.
Vink has actually won a total of eight titles this year, also partnering Korean Kyu-Seung Kim to triumph at the Swiss Open and Australia’s Heath Davidson to win at the Sardinia Open.
His ITF 1 Swiss Open victory with Kim is the last countable tournament on his points total and therefore accounts for the 10 points difference between 19-year-old Vink and 22-year-old Schroder, the latter who is featured in the ITF’s Class of 2021 series.