Entries confirmed for biggest Australian Open Wheelchair Championships
Tennis Australia has confirmed the 48 wheelchair tennis players set to contest the 2024 Australian Open - the biggest Australian Open Wheelchair Championships to date - on 23-27 January in Melbourne.
With world No. 3 and two-time champion Gustavo Fernandez opting to miss this year’s Australian Open on health grounds, nine of the top 10 and 14 of the world’s top 16 players will contest the men’s wheelchair draws, with Australian players Ben Weekes and Anderson Parker awarded the two wild card slots, giving Parker the opportunity to make his Grand Slam debut.
All of the top 16 women’s players are set to play at Melbourne Park, where world No. 15 Xiaohui Li is set to make her Grand Slam debut after making her UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Tour debut in Australia at the beginning of 2020 and returning to the Tour last season to claim nine titles.
Li’s nine singles titles in 2023 placed the Chinese 24-year-old equal third on the list of Tour winners across the men’s, women’s and quad divisions as her five ITF Futures titles and two ITF 2 and ITF 3 titles helped propel her to her career-best at No. 15 by the end of November.
Fifteen of the top 16 players will be among the field for the quad singles after the draw was increased from eight to 16 players for 2024, with Britain’s Greg Slade set to make his Australian Open debut and Australia’s Finn Broadbent making his Grand Slam debut after they were awarded the two wild card slots.
The top 14 players who have entered, based on UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Tour Rankings, gain direct entry for the Australian Open Wheelchair Championships with two wild card slots awarded in each of the men's, women's and quad draws.
The Australian Open Wheelchair Championships will the third of three tournaments contested in Australia in January, preceded by the Victorian Open and then the Melbourne Open, which the first of this year's Super Series events on the 2024 UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Tour.
ENTRY LISTS
Men
|
Rank |
Player |
Country |
|
1 |
Alfie Hewett |
GBR |
|
2 |
Tokito Oda |
JPN |
|
4 |
Martin De La Puente |
ESP |
|
5 |
Gordon Reid |
GBR |
|
6 |
Joachim Gerard |
BEL |
|
7 |
Ruben Spaargaren |
NED |
|
8 |
Takashi Sanada |
JPN |
|
9 |
Stephane Houdet |
FRA |
|
10 |
Takuya Miki |
JPN |
|
11 |
Tom Egberink |
NED |
|
12 |
Alex Cataldo |
CHI |
|
13 |
Daisuke Arai |
JPN |
|
14 |
Casey Ratzlaff |
USA |
|
15 |
Maikal Scheffers |
NED |
|
37 |
Ben Weekes (WC) |
AUS |
|
90 |
Anderson Parker (WC) |
AUS |
Women
|
Rank |
Player |
Country |
|
1 |
Diede De Groot |
NED |
|
2 |
Yui Kamiji |
JPN |
|
3 |
Jiske Griffioen |
NED |
|
4 |
Momoko Ohtani |
JPN |
|
5 |
Zhenzhen Zhu |
CHN |
|
6 |
Aniek Van Koot |
NED |
|
7 |
Dana Mathewson |
USA |
|
8 |
Manami Tanaka |
JPN |
|
9 |
Lizzy De Greef |
NED |
|
10 |
Angelica Bernal |
COL |
|
11 |
Kgothatso Montjane |
RSA |
|
12 |
Lucy Shuker |
GBR |
|
13 |
Pauline Deroulede |
FRA |
|
14 |
Shiori Funamizu |
JPN |
|
15 |
Li Xiaohui (WC) |
CHN |
|
16 |
Maria Moreno (WC) |
ARG |
Quad
|
Rank |
Player |
Country |
|
1 |
Niels Vink |
NED |
|
2 |
Sam Schroder |
NED |
|
3 |
David Wagner |
USA |
|
4 |
Heath Davidson |
AUS |
|
5 |
Donald Ramphadi |
RSA |
|
6 |
Guy Sasson |
ISR |
|
8 |
Andy Lapthorne |
GBR |
|
9 |
Rob Shaw |
CAN |
|
10 |
Ymanitu Silva |
BRA |
|
11 |
Francisco Cayulef |
CHI |
|
12 |
Tomas Marsaryk |
SVK |
|
13 |
Diego Perez |
CHI |
|
14 |
Ahmet Kaplan |
TUR |
|
15 |
Ali Ataman |
TUR |
|
19 |
Gregory Slade (WC) |
GBR |
|
48 |
Finn Broadbent (WC) |
AUS |