Hewett reacts to wheelchair career green light with ‘floods of tears’

Britain’s leading wheelchair tennis player, Alfie Hewett, said yesterday that he was in “floods of tears” after being told that he could continue in the sport after a nightmare 2½ years.

Hewett has suffered enormous stress since being warned in late 2019 that he would soon be ruled ineligible. Wheelchair tennis was planning to bring in a new classification system which did not consider that Perthes Disease made him disabled enough to compete. His career was poised to end soon after the Tokyo Paralympic cycle. Perthes Disease occurs when the blood supply fails to the top of the femur, causing issues in the hip socket.

But after appeals from at least four excluded players – including Hewett’s compatriot Dermot Bailey – the authorities have come to their senses. If you cannot realistically compete in regular tennis on your feet, because of a physical impediment, you will now be entitled to enter wheelchair events. Hewett received the go-ahead on Nov 13 in Amsterdam, where he had travelled to undergo further classification tests on his hip condition.

“Just a lot of emotion,” was how Hewett described his reaction. “I had barely got a wink of sleep the night before. So, I was pretty drained, and then there were floods of tears. I let everyone know back home, then I hopped on a flight. I had a glass of bubbly at the airport.”

Hewett, 23, has already won five grand-slam singles titles, while he and Scotland’s Gordon Reid picked up a silver medal at the Tokyo Paralympic Games.

“At first, it was really challenging to get my head around,” Hewett said, in reference to those first agonising months in 2019. “But I feel it gave me extra drive to push myself.”