Wagner and Vink top round-robin pools in Orlando
David Wagner and Niels Vink ensured their places at the top of their respective round-robin pools as the quad singles semi-final line-ups were confirmed on Friday’s fourth day of NEC Wheelchair Singles Masters action at the USTA National Campus in Orlando.
Meanwhile, the men’s and women’s semi-final line-ups were also decided on a fascinating day of UNIQLO Wheelchair Doubles Masters competition at the Lake Nona facility, with a three-way tie in Pool B in the men’s doubles and a final set tiebreak deciding the finishing order in Pool B of the women’s doubles.
Wagner-Lapthorne and Vink-Schroder into quad singles semis
All-Dutch semi-finals or finals are historically commonplace in major women’s singles and doubles events in wheelchair tennis, but on a good day for Dutch players in Orlando, 16-year-old Niels Vink ensured that there will be a Dutch presence in this year’s NEC Wheelchair Singles Masters quad final.
Vink and fellow Dutchman Sam Schroder will go head-to-head on Sunday for a place in Tuesday’s final after Vink repeated his victory over Andy Lapthorne in the final of July’s British Open. The young Dutchman made it back-to-back wins against world No. 2 and US Open champion Lapthorne, this time wrapping up a 6-4 6-3 victory to top Pool A.
Ten-time NEC Masters champion Wagner ensured that he improved on his performance of 12 months ago, when he missed out on a place in the semifinals, as he secured his place at the top of Pool B. The world No. 3 won the last two games of his opening set against Australia’s Heath Davidson and dropped just the third game of the second set to win his final round-robin match 6-4 6-1.
Wagner will now play Lapthorne for the first time since the US Open, with the Briton currently on a three-match winning streak against Wagner. Meanwhile, Schroder and Vink have won one match piece in their meetings this season, Schroder’s victory at October’s Sardinia Open taking him into a narrow 3-2 lead in career head-to-heads.
Spaargaren and Vandorpe stun Hewett and Reid
A year on from Spaargaren and Vandorpe beating second seeds Gustavo Fernandez and Gordon Reid in the round-robin phase of the 2018 UNIQLO Wheelchair Doubles Masters, the young Dutch-Belgian duo accounted for the second seeds again after beating reigning US Open champions Alfie Hewett and Reid 7-5 6-1. The win meant there was a three-way tie in Pool B of the men’s doubles, but such was their margin of victory over Hewett and Reid that Spaargaren and Vandorpe were the team to advance to the last four alongside pool winners Tom Egberink and Maikel Scheffers.
“It’s an amazing feeling. We started the week with a loss against Egberink and Scheffers and after that we had a talk about what we had to do better, so we did better yesterday against the Spanish guys (Daniel Caverzaschi and Martin de la Puente),” said Spaargaren. “But we knew today that if we wanted to win again we would have to do even better, so we really tried this morning to create that good energy during our training and we succeeded.”
“It’s a nice surprise (to be in the semifinals) because even though we had two wins we didn’t think we were going to make it to the semis because we tried to do the maths on our own and we thought we were going to be a little short,” said Vandorpe. “But then we heard the official decision and, of course, we are very happy.”
Spaargaren and Vandorpe will play reigning Australian Open and Wimbledon champions Joachim Gerard and Stefan Olsson in this year’s semi-finals. Last year’s runners-up, Gerard and Olsson raced through their last round-robin match against USA’s Chris Herman and Connerr Stroud 6-1 6-0.
Egberink and Scheffers will play reigning champions and top seeds Stephane Houdet and Nicolas Peifer for a place in Monday’s final.
Kruger and Montjane claim women’s doubles thriller
While top sees Diede de Groot and Aniek van Koot duly finished top of women’s doubles Pool A after easing to a 6-1, 6-1 victory over Brits Lucy Shuker and Jordanne Whiley, the last round-robin match in Pool B went to the opposite extreme as Katharina Kruger and Kgothatso Montjane edged out Marjolein Buis and Dana Mathewson in a final set tiebreak.
Kruger and Montane’s first tournament together since losing out to Buis and Mathewson in the quarter-finals of the Japan Open saw them come out strongly, taking a 5-1 lead before closing out the opening set. However, Japan Open champions Buis and Mathewson regained the momentum as they reeled off four games in a row to build a 5-2 lead and ultimately claim the second set.
Buis and Mathewson fought back from 5-3 down and then match point down to level the decider at 5-5, but they could not recover from losing a early mini-break in the tiebreak and Kruger and Montjane wrapped up arguably their most significant victory to date 7-6(2)
“We were speaking about it yesterday and said that we’re on centre court and we have to bring our ‘A game’, so I think that’s why we started so solid,” said Montjane. “We know how aggressive Dana is and we know how Marjolein is good with defence so we just wanted to come in and win a lot of points, because they rally a lot and so we wanted to see how we could win points to be able to stay on top of the game.”
“I love my crosses (cross-court balls) and everybody knows I love my crosses, so I was just trying to work on mixing it up and also go deep through the middle to build it up. And when people don’t expect it and move to the centre I’m just going to mix it up and throw some down-the-liners in,” said Kruger. “We’ve played together quite a lot but with some big gaps in between, so we have to get used to each other every time we play together again.”
With just the top two positions in the respective women’s doubles pools to play for on Friday, De Groot and van Koot go forward to a semifinal against Pool B runners-up Buis and Mathewson, one of only two partnership to have beaten the Dutch pairing this season, when they met in the Japan Open final.
Meanwhile, Kruger and Montjane will play two-time Paralympic bronze medallist Shuker and Jordanne Whiley for a place in Monday’s women’s doubles final.
LIVE STREAMING OF THE 2019 NEC WHEELCHAIR SINGLES MASTERS AND UNIQLO WHEELCHAIR DOUBLES MASTERS WILL BE AVAILABLE EACH DAY VIA THE ITF WHEELCHAIR TENNIS WEBSITE.