GORDON Reid and Alfie Hewett made it a back-to-back hat-trick of Wimbledon wheelchair doubles titles yesterday then said they feel they are getting better as a partnership with every passing year. The 26-year-old from Helensburgh and his 20-year-old doubles partner from East Anglia were too good for Joachim Gerard of Belgium and Stefan Olsson of Sweden, racing away to the first set then holding their nerve in a tense second to close out a 6-1, 6-4 win in one hour and 25 minutes in front of a large, noisy crowd on Court No 3.
At one stage in an entertaining match Olsson recovered to win a point after falling from his chair mid-rally but the win was particularly sweet for Reid, who was eliminated by Gerard in the opening round of wheelchair singles competition.
“We’re lot more mature now,” said Reid. “We’ve been playing together four years and we keep getting better every year as a partnership. There’s not too many teams sticking together each tournament at the moment, apart from maybe us and the French guys [Stephane Houdet and Nicolas Peifer]. I think that’s something that really helped us over the years. We’ve got a strong bond on court. I think we make ourselves very hard to beat. Yeah, hopefully we can continue to improve in the future.”
Reid, a former World No 1 and Wimbledon singles champion, now has eight Grand Slam titles in all to this name, not to mention an Olympic gold and silver medal. With he, and Hewett, moving on now to compete this week at the British Open in Nottingham, one of the bigger events on the wheelchair tennis calendar, this is a sport which is developing fast.
“It’s a really exciting time for the sport at the moment, especially at the top of the game,” said Reid. “I think the slams are doing a lot for the wheelchair tennis as a whole. It’s getting better and better and improving every year, especially here. There’s a bit of change going on at the moment in the ITF with wheelchair tennis, exploring how the future of the sport is going to look.”
“They’re all special,” said Hewitt. “Every year to come back and win it, it’s tougher each year. People kind of expect you just to win it. We know that’s not the case.”
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