Wheelchair players had hero in Vergeer
Esther Vergeer had few role models in wheelchair tennis and limited opportunities when she took up the sport.
Those aren’t problems any more, and she’s a big reason why.
“That was also what I liked about my career, is that I know I was the one that pioneered. I was the one that could explore it all. And I was the one that needed to figure out what the pathway was,” Vergeer said in a telephone interview as she prepared for her induction into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. “That was also the fun part.”
Vergeer was added to the Newport, R.I., shrine Saturday along with American Rick Draney, who won 12 singles titles and six in doubles before the Grand Slam era of wheelchair tennis. Draney has been credited with bringing quad tennis — a classification that accounts for impairment in the arms as well — to the Paralympics and other top tournaments.
Wheelchair tennis candidates are considered for election into the Hall of Fame every four years. Vergeer and Draney are the sixth and seventh wheelchair inductees.
Vergeer, a 21-time Grand Slam singles champion and seven-time Paralympic gold medalist, began her career in an era when wheelchair tennis wasn’t included in the top events and retired as its most dominant player, holding the No. 1 spot in the world rankings for 668 weeks from 2000-13 and winning 470 straight singles matches.
She won 96 percent of her singles matches in all, and also won 136 doubles titles.
“She’s a legend of the sport,” current No. 1 Diede De Groot said this month before winning Wimbledon for her 11th consecutive Grand Slam wheelchair singles title and her 111th match in a row — a streak second only to Vergeer’s.
Vergeer suffered from a series of strokes as a child, and an operation for an abnormality in her spinal cord blood supply left her legs paralyzed. She also played volleyball and won a European wheelchair basketball championship before devoting herself to tennis.
Although wheelchair singles became an official sport at the 1992 Paralympics, it wasn’t added to the Grand Slam tournaments for more than a decade after that.
Although de Groot joked that the Dutch success comes from the drinking water, Vergeer praised her homeland for providing equal resources, such as training facilities and experts.
“Since I was very little, I’ve followed her every step of the way,” de Groot said.
Vergeer called that “the biggest honor you can ever have.”
“If I can be a role model for next-generation players, that is a big compliment. I wish I had that when I started playing tennis,” she said, adding that newcomers today might be looking up de Groot the same way.
“And at the same time I realize that I am over 40 and maybe I’m not the role model anymore . . . So it’s for the next generation to make [the] next heroes.”