THERE was double delight for Dutch wheelchair tennis players at the 125th Championships, Wimbledon, writes MARSHALL THOMAS.
Maikel Scheffers and Ronald Vink clinched their first men’s doubles title, and Sharon Walraven and Esther Vergeer retained their ladies’ doubles title after coming from 5-2 down in the third and deciding set of their final.
Top seeds Scheffers and Vink managed to reverse the result of the 2009 men’s doubles final as they took the last two games of the opening set off French duo Stephane Houdet and Michael Jeremiasz before easing through the second set to secure a 7-5, 6-2 victory and end Houdet and Jeremiasz’s hopes of regaining the title.
“It’s an amazing feeling to finally be a Wimbledon champion,” said Scheffers, who was winning his first title at The Championships, while his doubles partner Vink was winning his third doubles title after previously partnering another Dutchman, Robin Ammerlaan, to back-to-back victories in 2007 and 2008.
Scheffers and Vink knocked defending champions Ammerlaan and Stefan Olsson, of Sweden, out with a 6-0, 6-3 victory in Saturday’s semi-finals and Scheffers admitted it was the perfect platform for Sunday’s final.
“Our semi-final was the best warm-up for today and gave us lots of confidence. We played well yesterday, but we were awesome today, especially against the quality of the opposition we had.”
The women’s doubles final was an enthralling contest that began with top seeds Vergeer and Walraven missing game points to take a 4-2 lead, but they finally moved ahead by a clear break at 5-3 and maintained their advantage to take the set.
However, second seeds Jiske Griffioen and Aniek van Koot maintained their hopes of repeating their Florida Open victory over their compatriots in April this year as they won the last four games of the second set, with Vergeer reaching for a backhand that flew out of court on set point.
Vergeer’s bid for a third successive Wimbledon title looked like it might fail in the deciding set as Griffioen and van Koot took a 5-2 lead, but Vergeer and Walraven remained calm and slowly chipped away at the deficit en route to retaining the title with a run of five games in succession to round off a 6-4, 3-6, 7-5 victory,
“Our game plan is usually for me to hit deep from the baseline until Sharon can come in and finish the points at the net, but at times today that didn’t work,” said Vergeer. “It wasn’t our best tennis, but we won and that’s the main thing, to be Wimbledon champion again.”
Lucy Shuker and Jordanne Whiley, the first all-British pairing to contest the ladies’ wheelchair tennis doubles at Wimbledon, ended their campaign in fourth place after a 3-6, 6-7(8) loss to Marjolein Buis (The Netherlands) and Annick Sevenans (Belgium).
Shuker and Whiley slipped 1-4 down in the first set, but held a 3-0 second set lead before their opponents came back with the kind of tennis that had seen them take Vergeer and Walraven to three sets in Friday’s semi-finals.
However, Shuker and Whiley managed to take the set to a tie-break, fending off a series of match points and having set points of their own before their opponents wrapped up victory.
After losing their title on Saturday, last year’s men’s doubles champions Ammerlaan and Olsson ended their tournament on a winning note as they took third place with a 6-3, 6-3 victory over young Dutchman Tom Egberink and Shingo Kunieda, of Japan.
SATURDAY’S ACTION
TWO remarkable men’s wheelchair tennis semi-finals saw the defending champions Robin Ammerlaan (The Netherlands) and Stefan Olsson (Sweden) lose their title on Saturday.
Meanwhile, while 2009 champions Stephane Houdet and Michael Jeremiasz, of France, saved two match points en route to a thrilling three set victory in their semi-final.
The match of the day saw Houdet and Jeremiasz prevail 7-6(4), 6-7(1), 6-4 after two hours and 54 minutes following a tremendous challenge from the first-time doubles partnership of Tom Egberink of the Netherlands and Japan’s Shingo Kunieda
Houdet and Jeremiasz utilised dropshots to good effect as they broke serve at the start of the, but some fantastic tennis from both pairings saw Kunieda and Egberink lead for the first time after Houdet double-faulted to give them the advantage at 5-4. However, it was Kunieda’s turn to double fault as the scores drew level once again, before the opening set culminated in a tie-break, with Egberink and Kunieda opening up a 5-1 lead. Kunieda finally sent a forehand winner between the French pairing from mid-court to gain the advantage on the third set point for the Japanese-Dutch pairing.
Egberink continued to produce come fantastic tennis for someone of his 19 years of age making their first competitive appearance on grass as he and Kunieda opened up a 4-0 second let lead, the more experience French duo fought back and after Egberink had served for the match at 5-3 up Houdet left court briefly for a toilet break.
Houdet returned to court only for Kunieda to deliver an exquisite drop shot that brought up two match points. However two errors from Egberink and a looping forehand that bounced over the young Dutchman levelled the scores once more before Egberink and Kunieda broke Jeremiasz’s serve to force a second successive tiebreak that saw the French Paralympic champions take a commanding 5-0 lead. The deficit proved too much for Egberink and Kunieda to recover and they won just one point as an exciting finale beckoned.
Having lost two match points, Egberink and Kunieda set the early pace to keep their hopes alive and led 2-0 and 3-1 before an increasingly pumped up Houdet and Jeremiasz came back to lead 5-4 to give Kunieda the task of serving to stay in the match. Egberink produced one last flash of inspiration as she saved a match point with a powerful forehand winner down the centre of the court, but Kunieda sent a forehand into the net on Houdet and Jeremiasz’s second match point as they narrowly kept themselves on track to tray and regain the title.
The first semi-final of the day proved not to be quite as exciting as Dutch top seeds Maikel Scheffers and Maikel Scheffers got the better of a series of deuce exchanges in the early part of their match against Ammerlaan and Olsson and went on to ease to the first set as Vink fired an ace on set point.
A whitewash looked like it might be on the cards as the Dutch pairing went 5-0 ahead in the second set, too, but Ammerlaan and Olsson refused to give up their title without a fight and took three games in a row. However, they were unable to complete the comeback and after the final game of the match also went to deuce Ammerlaan served a double fault to bring his and Olsson’s defence to a disappointing end.
