Hewett extends win streak as Griffioen, Vink also triumph in Georgia
Twelve months ago this week Alfie Hewett became men’s singles world No. 1 for the second time in his career after winning the Cajun Classic.
With this week’s Super Series tournament starting on Tuesday in Baton Rouge, Hewett is currently secure at the top of the rankings for a fourth time, a position he consolidated on Sunday by claiming his first Georgia Open title to extend his winning streak to four tournaments and 15 matches on the 2023 UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Tour.
Inheriting the top spot from Shingo Kunieda in January after Kunieda announced his retirement didn’t necessarily sit well with Hewett. He would have preferred to have earnt the ranking in the heat of competition. However, with Tokito Oda now heading the chasing pack since finishing runner-up to Hewett at the Australian Open, Hewett won his third final of the year against world No.2 Oda 7-6(3) 6-1 in Rome, USA to lift the Georgia Open title for the loss of just one set dropped against Joachim Gerard in the semi-finals.
Hewett’s unbeaten match sequence grew even bigger when taking his men’s doubles record with Gordon Reid into consideration, the Brits now unbeaten in 10 completed matches together in 2023 after defeating Ben Bartram and Oda 6-3 6-0 in the first Tour doubles final for the young Anglo-Japanese partnership.
Griffioen returns to top three after first ITF 1 title since 2021
With world No.1 and defending champion Diede de Groot understandly entering the calculations for the upcoming Cajun Classic, it was two other former Dutch world No.1 players who contested the women’s singles final at the Georgia Open as Jiske Griffioen extended a winning sequence of her own.
Second seed Griffioen beat top seed Aniek van Koot for the fourth meeting in a row between the two players, Griffioen’s 6-3 6-2 victory completing a dominant week as she lifted her first ITF 1 singles title since the 2021 Swiss Open to earn a return to the top three in the women’s singles rankings for the first time since November 2017.
Griffioen remains unbeaten against Van Koot in four matches since Wimbledon 2022 – the first four matches they have contested since Griffioen announced her retirement from competitive wheelchair tennis in 2017 and then launched her comeback towards the end of 2019.
Back-to-back singles titles in Bolton, Great Britain, meant that Dana Mathewson went into her Georiga Open semi-final against Van Koot on a 10-match win streak, but a 6-1 7-5 loss to Van Koot ended the American's run. Nevertheless, the 32-year-old left Rome with the women’s doubles title for the second year in a row partnering Lucy Shuker.
Also for the second year in a row, Mathewson and Shuker beat the tournament top seeds in a deciding match tie-break in the final, their seventh title as a partnership coming after a 3-6 7-5 (10-8) victory over Kgothatso Montjane and Van Koot.
Vink primed for Cajun Classic title defence after Georgia title
Niels Vink heads into his Cajun Classic quad singles title defence this week with a 9-1 win-loss record for 2023, his only loss of the year having coming against fellow Dutchman Sam Schroder in the final of the Australian Open.
Top seed Vink made it two titles from three tournaments after retaining his Georgia Open title with a 6-3 6-3 win over Australian Heath Davidson, but with Schroder not in Rome it means that Vink will now begin the Cajun Classic as world No. 2. Both players remain on the same points total, but Schroder’s points have now been amassed from one less tournament.
Vink and Davidson were both singles title rivals and doubles champions together in Rome, where successive 6-1 6-1 wins booked them a place in the quad doubles final before they were awarded a walkover ahead of their scheduled title decider against Robert Shaw and David Wagner.
Baton Rouge poised for another Classic week of tennis
Now in its 32nd year, the Cajun Classic is one of the most enduring and iconic tournaments on the UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Tour.
With the 2020 and 2021 tournaments cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the much-anticipated return to Baton Rouge in 2022 saw the tournament staged with Super Series status for the just the third time in its history after being elevated to the highest tier of standalone wheelchair tennis tournaments for the first time in 2018.
In those previous three editions Hewett and De Groot won the men’s and women’s singles titles twice each, while Van Koot beat De Groot to the women’s singles title in 2019, when Shingo Kunieda won the men’s singles title and fellow Japanese Koji Sugeno claimed the quad singles title.
Three different players have won the quad singles title since 2018, but with 2018 champion Dylan Alcott joining Kunieda among the realms of former winners who are now retired, Sugeno lines up alongside Vink in a bid to become a two-time Super Series quad singles champion in Baton Rouge this year.
Look back before 2018 and a wealth of other former champions return to Louisiana hopeful of earning Super Series title success this week, with six days of competition getting underway on Tuesday with a star-studded entry that includes eight of the top 10 men's players, eight of the top 10 women's players and eight of the top 10 quad players.