De Groot and Van Koot reclaim Australian Open doubles title

Dutch duo Diede De Groot and Aniek Van Koot kept their cool on a balmy day in Melbourne to seal their second Australian Open women’s doubles title on a wheelchair doubles finals day dominated by partnerships playing under the same flag.

With the Tokyo Paralympics a matter of months away, duos from Netherlands, Australia and Great Britain laid down a marker with victory at the first Grand Slam of the season as Dylan Alcott and Heath Davidson collected a fourth straight Australian Open quad doubles crown on home turf, while Britons Alfie Hewett and Gordon Reid defended their 2020 crown.

De Groot and Van Koot, who swept all four majors in 2019, claimed their seventh Grand Slam title together with a 6-4 6-1 victory over No. 2 seeds Kgothatso Montjane of South Africa and Great Britain’s Lucy Shuker, recovering from a shaky start to clinch the opener before easing to victory in the second set.

“They put up a good fight in the first, I think we struggled a little bit,” said Van Koot, whose 23rd Grand Slam doubles victory moves above her compatriot Jiske Griffioen into second place in the list of all-time women’s wheelchair doubles champions, behind Esther Vergeer with 34.

“The second set felt a bit more comfortable. Everything went according to plan, like the way we set up beforehand, like how we wanted to play. It's really nice that it works out in a final.”

De Groot, who faces defending champion Yui Kamiji in the women’s singles final on Wednesday, has now won more than half of her 13 doubles titles with Van Koot, and puts their success down to training together back home in the Netherlands.

“We're investing a lot of time to play together, to get used to each other,” said the world No. 1. “We started playing with each other for the games, really to practice, to see if we could be a good doubles pairing, and from that we just built and built. Now we're to a level where we can win Grand Slams together.”

In a repeat of last year’s men’s doubles final, Hewett and Reid once again edged a tight encounter over No. 2 seeds Stephane Houdet and Nicolas Peifer 7-5 7-6(3) to claim their fourth successive Grand Slam doubles crown, having swept the three majors played in 2020, and 10th as a partnership dating back to Wimbledon in 2016.

“We got our first win together last year here,” said Hewett, who faces Joachim Gerard in the singles final on Wednesday. “To get it back-to-back, it's an awesome feeling, especially with the situation at the moment, not knowing how many opportunities we're going to have to compete this year. Yeah, it feels brilliant to be going home with a trophy in the bag.”

The victory sees Hewett and Reid equal a British record for the nation’s most successful Grand Slam doubles partnership, matching the 10 men’s doubles titles won by Lawrence and Reginald Doherty between 1897 and 1905.

“First I heard of it was Alfie telling me after the match point, which was a surprise to me,” Reid admitted. “It's been an amazing ride since 2014, whenever it was, we first started playing with each other.  Alfie was just kind of a young kid coming up, finishing school, and I think I was No. 1 in the world doubles at the time. It was a bit of a gamble, to be honest, at that stage – obviously one that I'm happy I took. It's paying off nicely for us now.”

Aussie duo Alcott and Davidson maintained their dominance of the Australian Open quad doubles event, the first to feature four pairs in the tournament’s history, with a 6-2 3-6 [10-7] win over Great Britain’s Andy Lapthorne and David Wagner of USA.

“I get to play tennis with one of my best mates – not many people can say that,” said Alcott, who will face Netherlands’ Sam Schroder in the quad singles final.

“It’s the 20th anniversary of us meeting this year. There’s a funny photo our coaches just sent to the media where we're both super-fat, I'm 10, he's 13. That was our first tournament at the tennis open outside Albury 20 years ago, pretty much to the day.”

That friendship paid dividends in a tight match as Alcott helped Davidson snap out of a second-set funk with a wheelchair tap and a few choice words before the match tiebreak.

“Expected a left hook,” he joked. “I have no idea what happened to me in the start of the second set. I just decided to really freak out, not play tennis very well. Big props to Dyl for giving me a little bit of a pep talk and getting in my ear and getting me back on track for the match tie. Those boys played pretty well, picked up their level – I think that's the third doubles final in a row that's gone to a match tiebreaker against those two.”

For Wagner, the fact that three sets of compatriots have emerged victorious in Melbourne speaks to the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic limiting playing opportunities, in spite of the expansion of the quad field to eight players for the first time at a major.

“We have really struggled to have events outside of the Grand Slams,” Wagner said. “We need to have some events come out that we can all play on our tour – not just Andy and I and the top eight men, top eight quads, top eight women, but the whole tour.

“We need to figure out how to make that happen, and then he and I can play more, we can be more ready. We don't train together often, so Dylan and Heath, who live 10 minutes from each other, have a huge advantage on that. The Dutch kids, huge advantage. So we need to get our tour back up and running.”