With 18 Grand Slam titles between them, including three on the clay courts of Roland Garros, Alfie Hewett and Gordon Reid bid to add more major success when they contest the French Open wheelchair events from tomorrow (Thursday).
Hewett and Reid will be looking to build on their part in last month’s record World Team Cup performance by Great Britain players on the LTA’s Wheelchair Tennis World Class Performance Programme. Both players were unbeaten in singles competition in Israel as they led Great Britain to a second World Team cup men’s title, each defeating players that they could well be drawn against this week in Paris.
Roland Garros holds very special memories for Hewett, who won his first Grand Slam singles title in Paris in 2017, coming from a set and 2-0 down to beat Argentina’s Gustavo Fernandez. He added his second major singles title at the US Open last September, beating world No. 1 Shingo Kunieda of Japan in the final and recently gained his first win over Kunieda since their New York meeting.
World No. 5 Hewett and seven-time Grand Slam champion Hewett said: “You could see my reaction at the World Team Cup as to how much that meant to me to beat Shingo again and going into Roland Garros unbeaten in my last three matches against Joachim (Gerard), Shingo and Stephane (Houdet), three of the world’s current top four players and three players that I could potentially meet at Roland Garros is, of course, very pleasing. Roland Garros is obviously a different event and a different surface, but it’s the same for all of us.”
Fernandez and Kunieda have played a part in Reid’s past Roland Garros successes, too. The 2016 Australian Open and Wimbledon men’s singles champion and current world No. 8 played Fernandez in his first Roland Garros men’s singles final in 2016, the same year that he claimed his second men’s doubles title in Paris partnering Kunieda.
Reid, the Rio 2016 Paralympic men’s singles gold medallist and 11-time Grand Slam champion, said: “I’ve have had some really good results in patches this season but found it difficult to put together a string of results to collect any titles. Training’s been going really well, so it’s about moving that into matches at the bigger tournaments now. Clay’s a surface that I feel my game can be really effective on and I’ve got to the final in Paris before, as well as winning the two doubles titles with Shingo, so I can take plenty of confidence from that as well as from my World Team Cup performances.”
Hewett and Reid will not find out their first round singles or doubles opponents until this evening (Wednesday) in Paris, with singles matches getting underway on Thursday. And while both players will be looking to build on past singles successes they will also be aiming for their first Roland Garros doubles crown together, having won the last three Wimbledon and the last two US Open titles.
For daily updates throughout Roland Garros, head to lta.org.uk or keep up to date with all the action on Twitter @the_LTA
Photo courtesy of the Tennis Foundation