Kunieda, Van Koot and Vink triumph as Georgia Open returns
Two years ago this week a series of first round matches were completed at the ITF 1 Georgia Open in Rome, USA, before the rest of the tournament was cancelled as the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic began to escalate, leading to the suspension of all ITF circuits.
As the Georgia Open returned to the UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Tour this year, Shingo Kunieda, Aniek van Koot and Niels Vink took the men’s, women’s and quad singles titles amid a series of intriguing results leading into this week’s Cajun Classic, the second Super Series tournament of the year.
Kunieda made it five titles in six tournaments stretching back to the Tokyo Paralympics as the world No. 1 edged out second seed Gustavo Fernandez 7-6(5) 5-7 7-5 in the men’s singles final, having been taken to three sets by countryman Takuya Miki for the second time in a row – albeit their last meeting came at the 2019 Japan Open.
Kunieda and Fernandez will have world No. 2 Alfie Hewett to contend with at the Cajun Classic, Hewett having been awarded the victory in the only tournament this season that Kunieda has not won after he retired from his Melbourne Open final against Hewett.
As Kunieda dropped a second set tie-break to Miki at Rome Tennis Centre at Berry College, the quarter-finals also signalled the continued rise of Ruben Spaargaren as the Dutchman took world No. 5 Stephane Houdet to a deciding set for the first time, having won no more than two games in their two previous career meetings.
Houdet’s 5-7 5-2 6-4 win over Spaargaren ended Spaargaren’s bid for a third successive singles title after the 22-year-old won back-to-back ITF 3 and ITF 2 titles in Bolton, Great Britain last month.
Those two victories have caused Spaargaren to set new goals for 2022, having already reached his intended target inside the world’s top 12, but even before that he had taken both Kunieda and world No. 4 Gordon Reid to three sets in Australia in January and he has twice beaten Tokyo silver medallist Tom Egberink since the start of the year.
Like Spaargaren, Lucy Shuker arrived in Georgia having secured back-to-back singles titles in Bolton, while the 10 days of tournaments in Great Britain last month also saw world No. 3 Aniek van Koot make an unexpected quarter-final exit at the ITF event.
However, fortunes were turned upside down as the back-to-back tournaments began in the USA, world No. 5 Shuker making a quarter-final exit against world No. 11 Angelica Bernal and the Colombian going on to make third seed Dana Mathewson the second top 10-ranked player she’d beaten in successive days.
After her loss in Bolton at the hands of Pauline Deroulede of France, Van Koot enjoyed two confidence-boosting straight sets wins in Georgia before saving her best performance for the final. The world No. 3 served up a 6-0 6-0 win over Bernal, whose progress to the women's singles final has earned her a return to the top 10.
Van Koot will now hope for more of the same as she returns to the scene of her most recent Super Series singles title, having beaten world No. 1 and fellow Dutchwoman Diede de Groot in straight sets in the final of the most recent edition of the Cajun Classic to be held, in 2019.
With Hewett set to feature in the Cajun Classic men’s singles draw alongside Kunieda, the former will hope to produce a performance that could see him challenge Kunieda for the world No. 1 ranking, with just 16 points currently separating them.
However, the contest for the quad singles world No. 1 ranking will also continue to provide an intriguing sub-plot to the tournament after Niels Vink beat fellow Dutchman and top seed Sam Schroder to lift the ITF 1 title in Georgia over the weekend.
Schroder’s first tournament since denying Dylan Alcott a victorious end to his career at the Australian Open began in a fashion befitting of the of the top seed’s recent achievements as the 22-year-old recorded successive 6-0 6-0 wins over American Steve Baxter and South Africa’s Donald Ramphadi.
However, what was also Schroder’s first tournament since inheriting the world No. 1 ranking from the now-retired Alcott in mid-February did not end the way he had hoped and his early results suggested it might.
Defeating Ramphadi so comprehensively was maybe not so much of a surprise. Schroder also won 6-0 6-0 when they met at last year’s BNP Paribas World Team Cup and dropped only three games to the South African when they met at the Victoria Open, the first tournament of the year. However, Ramphadi came into their latest contest having beaten fourth seed Heath Davidson 7-6(2) 7-5.
Ramphadi continues to make progress up the quad singles rankings and achieved his career-best ranking at No. 10 on 14 February, the same day that Schroder realised his dream of becoming world No. 1. However, the nine places separating them were evident as Schroder raced into his fourth final in four tournaments this year.
In the bottom half of the draw Vink was arguably just as impressive as he beat successive top 10-ranked American opponents, Bryan Barten and third seed David Wagner, for the loss of just three games in total. Vink, who defeated Schroder 6-3 6-1 to win January’s Melbourne Open, completed a 6-0 6-2 victory over his doubles partner on this occasion as the 19-year-old world No. 2 now attempts to win his second Super Series title of 2022.