PETER Norfolk won his fifth British Open Wheelchair Tennis Championships quad singles title – and just missed out on the doubles prize with Andrew Lapthorne.
Norfolk, who went into the singles final world ranked No. 2, will now close the gap on American world No. 1 David Wagner in the new world rankings after defeating Wagner 6-4, 5-7, 6-3.
“There’s always more pressure at my home tournament, especially against David, but I was very happy with the way I played and happy with my new racket and the new shots that I’ve been working on,” said Norfolk, who came back from 2-0 down in both of the opening two sets before opening up a 5-0 third and final set lead en route to victory.”
Norfolk and Lapthorne lost their quad doubles final 1-6, 6-7(4) to top seeds Wagner and Nick Taylor.
The remarkable Esther Vergeer clinched her eleventh successive British Open women’s singles title after easing to a 6-1, 6-2 victory over her fellow Dutchwoman and world No. 2 Jiske Griffioen.
The third title to be decided saw Dutch top seeds Maikel Scheffers and Ronald Vink repeat their win over French Paralympic champions Stephane Houdet and Michael Jeremiasz in the Wimbledon men’s doubles final.
Scheffers and Vink clinched their first British Open doubles title together after a 6-4, 7-6(5) victory, having come from 4-2 down in the second set tie-break.
The penultimate day of play saw Bingham’s David Phillipson taking the men’s consolation singles final.
British No. 2 Phillipson put up a confident performance to win his semi-final against Frenchman Lahcen Majdi 6-1 6-2 before defeating second seed Joachim Gerard of Belgium 7-6(1), 6-3 in the final.
The last day of play also saw Dutch world No. 2 Maikel Scheffers retain his men’s main draw singles title after he beat first-time British Open finalist and world No. 7 Stefan Olsson of Sweden 6-3, 6-0.
The women’s main draw doubles final featured both of last year’s champions, Annick Sevenans (Belgium) and Aniek van Koot (The Netherlands), but this year the two players were on different sides of the net and it was van Koot that managed to share in the title for the second successive year.
Van Koot partnered women’s singles runner-up Jiske Griffioen to victory, the all-Dutch top seeds defeating Marjolein Buis (The Netherlands) and Sevenans 6-3, 6-4 to add the British Open title to the Florida Open and BNP Paribas French Open Super Series titles that they had already won this season.
The last action of the championships ended with an all-British victory in a final set tie-break in the men’s second draw doubles final.
Dermot Bailey paired up with the vastly experienced former Great Britain Paralympian Kevin Plowman to defeat Argentina’s Augustin Ledesma and Noah Yablong (USA) 4-6, 6-1, 7-6(3).
For the latest world rankings:
www.itftennis.com/wheelchair/rankings/index.asp
