Dana Mathewson is turning into quite the comeback queen this week at the NEC Wheelchair Singles Masters and UNIQLO Wheelchair Doubles Masters in Orlando.

After her exploits earlier in the week to take world No. 1 Diede de Groot to three sets, Mathewson and partner Lucy Shuker showed great powers of recovery as a team on the fourth day of play at the USTA National Campus, denying Japanese second seeds Yui Kamiji and Saki Takamuro a place in the women’s doubles semi-finals.

With both partnerships having previously lost out to the Chinese-Japanese team of Zhenzhen Zhu and Momoko Ohtani, Mathewson and Shuker’s head-to-head against Kamiji and Takamuro was a crucial must win contest, the reward being a place in the last four.

After seeing a 4-1 lead disappear in the first set, Mathewson and Shuker faced five set points in the tie-break. But from 6-1 down the Anglo-American pairing never made a false move, Shuker levelling the tie-break at 6-6 with a drive volley and Takamuro committing the error that gave Mathewson and Shuker and unlikely one set lead.

However, the drama was not over and from 5-3 down in the second set, the 2017 Masters semi-finalists battled back to win the next four games and secure their return to the last four.

“Lucy and I have always been a good doubles pairing together, we have great chemistry, we’re good friends, so playing doubles with her is always fun,” said Mathewson. “We knew today’s match was going to be tough and it definitely was. We somehow came back (in the first set tie-break) which was amazing and I’m really proud of us, I think we fought really hard today and worked well together and I couldn’t be happier.

“I’d be lying if said I was just being positive the whole time, because that’s just not true. She helped my mentality by keeping me going and saying ‘come on, we’re still in this’ and I did this same for her. So it was a mix of being disappointed (to be behind), panicky a little bit, but also having that belief that we can do this.”

Mathewson and Shuker’s next challenge is possibly as big as it gets, as they face Dutch top seeds De Groot and Aniek van Koot, the 2019 Doubles Masters champions, in their semi-final.

However, Mathewson should be able to draw plenty of encouragement from her singles match against de Groot on the opening day of play, when she was on the verge of a 3-0 lead in the third and deciding set before eventually slipping to a 6-2 1-6 6-3.

“You could say that I had home court advantage because I train here (at the USTA National Campus),” said Mathewson. “But that (stadium court) was not the court I train on every day because we train on the other side of the campus, but I had the luxury of training there the week prior to this event and I’m familiar with the weather here, I’m familiar with a lot of stuff, so maybe that played a factor in it, but I just came out swinging.”

“I’m really happy that doing that was good enough to beat Diede in a set, at least. I surprised myself, I surprised Diede, I think, and I surprised a lot of people, but it was a good confidence-booster for me,” she added.

Mathewson’s performance against De Groot was the latest in a number of impressive performances this season that resulted in the 30-year-old reaching her career-best singles ranking at No. 8 in August, but she believes there are more improvements ahead.

I know I’m as fit as anyone out here, my strokes are as good as anyone out here, I just have to have the experience of playing like they (the highest ranked players) do. They play each other all the time at the Slams and other big events and I don’t have the luxury of doing that as much, so to have a taste of it hear and hopefully playing more Slams next year now that my ranking’s a bit higher, I think there’s more good stuff to come from me.”   

While De Groot and Van Koot continue their bid for back-to-back Doubles Masters titles against Mathewson and Shuker, the other women’s semi-final will see Chile’s Macarena Cabrillana and South Africa’s Kgothatso Monjane take on Ohtani and Zhu after Cabrillana and Montjane lost out to De Groot and Cabrillana 6-2 6-2 in their remaining round-robin group match.

The men’s semi-finals see top seeds Alfie Hewett and Gordon Reid hope to avenge their loss to Ruben Spaargaren and Jef Vandorpe in the round-robin group stage of the 2019 Doubles Masters in Orlando, a result that saw Spaargaren and Vandorpe advance to the semi-finals at the expense of the Brits.

Hewett and Reid needed seven match points before completing an otherwise routine 6-0 6-0 Group A win over Alexander Cataldo and Casey Ratzlaff in their last round-robin match. Meanwhile, Paralympic champions Stephane Houdet and Nicolas Peifer ensured that they finished top of Group B after beating Spaargaren and Vandorpe 7-6(4) 6-0.

Three-time Doubles Masters champions Houdet and Peifer now play Dutch duo Tom Egberink and Maikel Scheffers in a semi-final between the Tokyo Paralympic men’s doubles gold and bronze medallists after Egberink and Scheffers completed their round-robin matches with a 6-1 6-0 win over USA’s Chris Herman and Conner Stroud.