When Alfie Hewett beat Gordon Reid 6-0 6-3 in mid-February to win his first ABN AMRO World Wheelchair Tennis Tournament, it was the second all-British UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Tour men’s final to take place at an integrated ATP World Tour event in the last nine months.

However, the integration of wheelchair tennis events into ATP or WTA tournaments dates back almost 30 years, to the early 1990s, when wheelchair tennis was first staged at Crandon Park in Key Biscayne, Florida, during an event once known as the Lipton Championships.

Miami native John Caden, former director of the wheelchair tennis tournament at Key Biscayne, first became involved as the result of a business trip to the Netherlands.

“I met Monique van den Bosch (now Kalkman) and Chantal Vandierendonck. I was excited to learn that the two of them would be playing in my home town of Miami and I made plans to watch them play,” recalls Caden.

“Arriving at Crandon Park early on a Saturday morning, I discovered that ‘the wheelies’ were playing at 8.00am and would be finished well before any of the main ATP or WTA draw players began to warm up,” he continues. “They were also playing their matches on satellite courts, far away from any type of grandstand court. I also learned that they were competing for hardly any prize money.”

In the coming years, Caden and his team were able to make substantial changes.

“Over the five or so years that I was involved, we were able to move the wheelchair matches into the late afternoon and early evening, in between sessions for main draw matches, which gave tennis fans around the facility the chance to see these amazing wheelchair athletes in action,” he says. “We also moved wheelchair matches into grandstand courts, near the centre of the action and we were able to raise some sponsorship funds which allowed us to provide better prize money for the players.”

Originally managed by the National Wheelchair Tennis Foundation, the Key Biscayne wheelchair tournament continued to thrive under the management of the ITF.

“The Lipton was elevated to a higher tournament classification and, besides Ellen de Lange of the ITF, people like Butch Buchholz and his great staff, along with Alan Mills, the long-time referee, helped us achieve the level of integration we had,” says Caden.

Caden’s favourite Key Biscayne memories include wheelchair tennis being played on the main Stadium Court after one of the ATP event finalists was injured and an exhibition match was instead scheduled for the paying tennis public.

“The organisers arranged for Jim Courier to play an exhibition match with the remaining finalist who, I think, was Andre Agassi,” he recalls. “However, it was going to take Courier about an hour to get to Key Biscayne. So the organisers put a wheelchair doubles match on Stadium Court. The fans were blown away by the quality and athleticism they witnessed.”

Another memory involves Esther Vergeer.

“I remember her grit,” says Caden. “On her way to play a match, her wheelchair was caught in a rut on the side of a pavement. She fell out of her chair, dusted herself off, and went out to win her match. After the match, I drove her to the hospital and learned that she had fractured her hip.”

While Vergeer would go on to win a hat-trick of women’s singles titles in Key Biscayne between 2003 and 2005, the last wheelchair event at Key Biscayne was held in 2006. Within a few years, whilst still playing herself, Vergeer would become tournament director of the current ABN AMRO World Wheelchair Tennis Tournament in Rotterdam

“I see that the partnership or collaboration with ATP and WTA events is very important for profiling wheelchair tennis and for getting it more seen,” says Vergeer. Of course, the regular standalone wheelchair tennis tournaments need to exist and they are very, very important for the development and the growth of the sport. But to raise the profile of wheelchair tennis and getting it seen by more and more public I think it is important that we are integrating more and more tournaments throughout the year.”

The current Rotterdam ITF 1 wheelchair event began life as an exhibition before becoming a tournament in 2009, while a year later the Internazionali BNL ‘d’Italia in Rome hosted its first wheelchair tournament.
Former ITF World Champion Maikel Scheffers has played in all 12 Rotterdam tournaments to date.

It’s important for wheelchair tennis to showcase our skills and level during an ATP event. The first time I saw Nadal or Federer I was impressed and they have inspired me during my career and they still do,” he says.

“The ABN AMRO means a fifth Grand Slam to me and on my home ground it feels really special. All the side events organised during the event, too, are amazing! Wheelchair tennis is fully integrated in Rotterdam and I’m more then happy about that,” adds Scheffers. “It has grown to be one of the best organised tournaments for us as players, there is live coverage during the week and wheelchair tennis is fully integrated in their social media channels. I would hope and would like to see bigger draws in the future, but that all is related to court availability.”

In the first round of the very first wheelchair tennis tournament in Rotterdam, Scheffers played Sweden’s Stefan Olsson and Olsson was also involved in the beginnings of the wheelchair tournament at the Internazionali BNL ‘d’Italia at Rome’s Foro Italico.

“My first experience of an ATP event was in Rome, when I played at an exhibition. That was a fun experience and I remember how overwhelming it was to play at this beautiful site and all the things you could do and see were just great,” says Olsson. “A lot has changed over the period I have been playing at these tournaments. Once we weren’t even allowed to be in the locker rooms and didn’t have full credentials, the gym wasn’t accessible and we definitely were not allowed on big courts.

“The impact we wheelchair tennis players have on playing on these huge stages is definitely to showcase wheelchair tennis and show that anyone can play tennis” he adds. “And, of course, to show how good our level is to the public. With the help of these bigger ATP tournaments, it helps us grow our own tour with the fans and get more help from sponsors to promote our own tou. It also helps to get us on the professional stage we want to be at.”

Gianluca Vignali, tournament director of the ITF 2 Internazionali BNL ‘d’Italia wheelchair event in Rome says:

“In 2008 and 2009 we had an exhibition during the ATP tournament. The first wheelchair tournament was in 2010. The event has been seen by so many people throughout these years that wheelchair tennis is now known all over our country,”

“Lots of new Italian players started to play wheelchair tennis thanks to this event and this is one of the best ways to make our sport known today. I’ve got a lots of memories. One of the funniest was the hunt by some Brazilian players to get a Roger Federer selfie - and they got it, in the end.”

With wheelchair tennis also now an integrated part of the Fever-Tree Championships on the grass courts at The Queen’s Club in London, the most recent ATP Tour event to embrace wheelchair tennis is the Rakuten Japan Open in Tokyo.

“In late 2018, we decided to bring wheelchair tennis to our ATP 500, the Rakuten Japan Open, because of the upcoming Tokyo Paralympics and because of (the profile of) Shingo Kunieda,” says Daisuke Kitahara of IMG Tennis, the Marketing Director of the Rakuten Japan Open.

“At every Grand Slam, Shingo is playing at the same venue where Kei Nishikori plays, so why not at the Rakuten Open? We were confident of generating positive attention from tennis fans and media in Japan following the success of the World Team Cup in 2016 in Tokyo,” adds Kitahara.

“Another advantage is that the ITF oversees both able-bodied and wheelchair tennis. In that regard, both are close to each other and that enabled us to easily hold wheelchair tennis at the Rakuten Open. Last year Novak Djokovic said he wished the wheelchair tennis tournament at the Rakuten Open would become a legacy. It makes really good sense, having wheelchair event at ATP or WTA tournaments as the best way to reach the target of promoting wheelchair tennis.

In its first year in 2019, the Rakuten Japan Open Wheelchair Championships saw home favourite Kunieda play Olsson in the singles final, while the two Grand Slam champions also paired up to win the men’s doubles.

“We put the wheelchair tennis final before the ATP matches so that all ticket holders could have access to the wheelchair tennis final. Unfortunately, the rain delayed the wheelchair final, which ended up starting at the same time as the ATP doubles final,” says Kitahara.

“Despite that, about 2,000 people watched the action, but I think the venue would have been full if it had not rained,” he adds. “Believe it or not, a couple of the first round or semifinal matches could draw more audience than the final. Media attention was huge, because many Japanese TV and press were there. One newspaper wrote more about Shingo’s victory than about Djokovic’s victory.”

“We strongly believe that in order to promote wheelchair tennis, the first target should be general tennis fans,” says Kitahara. “We need to create opportunities to make them watch wheelchair tennis, because elite wheelchair tennis is already at the professional level, is able to wow people and is fun to watch.”

Kitahara says that the 2019 Rakuten Japan Open drew an audience of about 100,000 people during the tournament.

“We tried to turn these tennis fans who have not seen wheelchair tennis in the past to those who have watched wheelchair tennis,” he adds. “Shingo’s factor is huge, of course, and it is the same as for Kei Nishikori. Thanks to Kei, the popularity of tennis in Japan has sky-rocketed. We are discussing what to do after the Tokyo Paralympics and how best to take advantage of this momentum.”