Fernandez into first Masters final as top seeds progress
Gustavo Fernandez booked his place in his first NEC Wheelchair Singles Masters final on the penultimate day in Orlando, which featured all six singles semi-finals and the UNIQLO Wheelchair Doubles Masters finals after rain had washed out the sixth day of competition.
Meanwhile, Sam Schroder and Niels Vink guaranteed that the ITF’s year-end wheelchair tennis championship will have its first Dutch quad singles champion and Diede de Groot and Yui Kamiji set up their fourth successive meeting in the women’s singles final.
World No. 4 Fernandez will play 2017 champion Alfie Hewett in the men’s singles final after securing his first win in six matches this season against world No. 5 Gordon Reid, the Argentinean’s 7-6(5) 4-6 6-0 victory denying Hewett and Reid the chance of a second all-British final in four years.
“I’ve always come to this part of the year with the enthusiasm to try and win (the Masters), but while I’ve played great in the last couple of Masters, in the semis I’ve always played someone who, that day, played better than me and they deserved it more than I did,” Fernandez told ITFTennis.com after emerging from his round-robin group in second place. But I’m looking forward to playing my best because I’ve prepared very well for this tournament.”
Fernandez’s preparations certainly paid dividends as he came from 3-0 down to force the first set to a tie-break, earning the first set point and converting it with a a cross-court forehand winner that he hailed with a joyous outpouring of emotion.
Reid saved three successive break points before taking the ninth game of the second set and he eventually drew the error off a Fernandez backhand that was to see him level the match on his fourth match point.
However, Fernandez recovered quickly to take a commanding 3-0 lead in the decider and Reid’s error count escalated rapidly before the Briton put one last backhand into the net to hand victory to his opponent.
While Reid went into his semi-final unbeaten in five matches against Fernandez, Hewett took an eight-match winning streak into his last four meeting with Stephane Houdet and delivered a clinical 6-2 6-0 victory.
“It was probably my best match here and a good little confidence-booster heading into the final tomorrow,” said Hewett. “I produced some of my best tennis; you want to develop as the tournament goes on and I feel like I’ve done that. I played the wind smartly and was really strong.
“Obviously Gustavo is very dangerous, but I’ve had some good performances against him in the recent past, but on his day he can beat anyone, so I’ve got to play intelligent tennis.”
De Groot and Kamiji set up another Masters final
While De Groot has won the last three women’s titles at the Singles Masters, they have all come against Kamiji. When the Dutchwoman attempts to become the second most successful women’s player in the history of Masters on Sunday, it will again be against the 2013 champion, who remains the only non-Dutch player to have won the women’s title.
World No. 1 De Groot had dropped just one set to her countrywoman Aniek van Koot in their four 2021 matches before they met in the last four in Orlando and the top seed showed few signs of signs of vulnerability in their latest encounter as she opened a comfortable 3-0 lead.
Van Koot’s biggest success of the opening set came in winning the sixth and seventh games back-to-back, but you have to go back to Wimbledon 2019 for Van Koot’s last win over De Groot and that record remain sas De Groot wrapped up a 6-4 6-3 win in Orlando in an hour and 32 minutes.
“It’s a little bit strange being back out here after such a busy year and not having had many normal training weeks,” said De Groot, who started her latest Masters challenge earlier in the week by dropping her first set at the year-end championship since the start of her reign as champion in 2017.
“It’s just been going away for a tournament and coming back and going away again, so to be here again and get into that rhythm of playing matches is nice and hopefully I’ll play a good match tomorrow.”
Referring to her opening round-robin group match, when she dropped the second set to USA’s Dana Mathewson 6-1, De Groot added:
“Dana played really well. She really took it on when I missed a little depth in my strokes and she did it really well.”
De Groot goes into this year’s final in Orlando having only lost one match all season, that coming against Kamiji at the Melbourne Open in February before the rivals contested a final set tie-break at the Australian Open less than a week later.
Since then De Groot has accumulated six straight sets wins over Kamiji, including two more tie-breaks and she is understandably expecting a tough challenge in the final.
“I’ve seen that Yui is trying some different thing this week, so let’s see what she brings,” said De Groot. “I’m trying different things as well, taking the ball early and seeing that the wind is not taking the ball as much, so hopefully we’ll have another good match together.”
Schroder and Vink set for all-Dutch quad singles final
Either Schroder or Vink will add their name to the NEC Singles Masters roll of honour as the first Dutch winner of the quad singles since the event was added to the Masters schedule in 2004.
Since 2004 USA’s David Wagner has amassed a record 11 titles, but Wagner was unable to pose too many problems for world No. 3 Vink as the 18-year-old wrapped up a 6-2 6-3 semi-final win in Orlando that leaves him one win short of becoming the youngest male champion at the ITF’s year-end championship.
That distinction currently belongs to Alfie Hewett, who was 19 when he won the men’s singles title in 2017, while Esther Vergeer remains the youngest Singles Masters champion overall, having won the first of her 14 women’s singles titles in 1998 at the age of 17.
Vink would have surpassed Vergeer’s record, had he been able to win the 2019 final on his Singles Masters debut, but on that occasion Wagner’s experience proved too much for the 16-year-old.
However, two years on, youth outlasted experience as Vink reached his eighth singles final of the year, while it was a similar story in the other semi-final as 22-year-old Schroder beat four-time finalist Andy Lapthorne 6-2 6-4.
Lapthorne missed the opportunity to win the second game, despite having been 40-0 to the good, allowing world No.2 Schroder to open up a 3-0 advantage that he never looked likely to let slip.
Thereafter, Lapthorne briefly rallied after falling 4-2 behind in the second set, levelling the scores at 4-4. However, two games later the world No. 6 was broken to love as he ended the match on a double fault to put Schroder into his seventh final of 2021.
“Me and Andy have played a lot of matches the last couple of years, so you always know what to expect from him, he’s always going to keep going,” said Schroder. “In the first set I felt in control and in the second he started picking it up again and he made it really difficult in the second, so I went from 4-2 up to nearly 5-4 down. But overall I’m really happy with the level I showed in that match. I look forward to playing the final against Niels, it’s my first time in the final, so I’m really excited.”