The likes of Diede de Groot, Niels Vink and Tom Egberink will bid to add to what has been a remarkable few months for Dutch wheelchair tennis when they line up among 39 players who will contest the 2021 NEC Wheelchair Singles Masters and UNIQLO Wheelchair Doubles Masters at the USTA National Campus in Orlando, Florida, from 31 October to 7 November.

De Groot aims to complete what has been her most dominant season to date with a shot at her fourth NEC Wheelchair Singles Masters title in a row. Victory would make the 24-year-old world No.1 the second-most successful women’s player in the history of the event behind 14-time champion Esther Vergeer. She currently sits on three Singles Masters titles alongside compatriot Jiske Griffioen.

While De Groot may not have played as many tournaments as in previous seasons, she will arrive in Orlando having won 31 of her 32 matches in 2021 to date.

Her only loss so far this year came against Yui Kamiji at the Melbourne Open in February, and Japan’s world No. 2 goes into this year’s 27th edition of the NEC Singles Masters still as the only non-Dutch women’s player to have won the year-end singles championship.

Among the field of eight women’s singles players, the only other previous champion is world No. 3 Aniek van Koot, who won the title in 2014. Kamiji’s countrywoman Momoko Ohtani makes her debut this year, as does Macarena Cabrillana, the first women’s player from Chile to contest the NEC Singles Masters after making her Grand Slam debut at the Australian Open in February.  

The first women's wheelchair player to complete the Golden Slam, De Groot is the only one of the three singles gold medallists from the Tokyo Paralympics who will line-up in Orlando, with neither fellow world No. 1 players Shingo Kunieda nor Dylan Alcott, who also sealed a Golden Slam this season, bidding to add to their collection of singles titles.

Also missing from the men’s field is Joachim Gerard, winner of four of the last five NEC Singles Masters titles. The Belgian continues his recovery after falling ill at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics.

In the absence of Gerard and Kunieda, Alfie Hewett and Stephane Houdet are the only other previous champions who will bid for victory in Orlando, Hewett looking to go one better than in 2019 and add to his title in 2017, when he became the youngest Singles Masters men’s champion.

It is a decade since Houdet won his only Singles Masters title to date. The evergreen Frenchman’s first aim this year will be to progress from his round-robin group to the semi-finals for the first time since 2016. World No. 4 Gustavo Fernandez will hope to go beyond the semi-finals for the first time, while Tokyo men’s singles silver medallist Egberink makes his Singles Masters debut.  

While NEC has been title sponsor of the Singles Masters since the very first edition in 1994, 2021 is a special year as NEC celebrates 30 years of its sponsorship of wheelchair tennis. It is also a landmark year for the quad event at the Singles Masters, which will feature a field of eight players for the first time.

David Wagner will look to add to his record 11 Singles Masters titles in Orlando. The American won his most recent title at the venue in 2019, beating a 16-year-old Vink in the final. Fast-forward to 2021, and the balance of power appears to have shifted to Vink and fellow Dutchman Sam Schroder. The Tokyo silver and bronze medallists head the field in Orlando as they both bid to become the first Dutch player to win the quad title at the Singles Masters.

The expanded field of eight quad players means that Bryan Barten will makes his Masters debut, joining Wagner in a two-fold challenge for the host nation.

Tokyo gold medallists headline UNIQLO Doubles Masters entry  

All three Tokyo 2020 Paralympic doubles gold medal-winning partnerships head the entry lists for the UNIQLO Wheelchair Doubles Masters, with the men's gold, silver and bronze medallists all reuniting in Orlando.

Houdet and Nicolas Peifer, the first partnership to win back-to-back Paralympic men’s doubles gold medals with their victories in Rio and Tokyo, will set out to try and make it four Doubles Masters crowns in five years with a third successive victory in Orlando.

Hewett and Gordon Reid will be an ever-present threat to the French duo, as they were in the 2017 final, when the British pairing won their first Doubles Masters title to date. But having completed the calendar Grand Slam this season, Hewett and Reid will need to put their 2019 Orlando performance behind them, having been narrowly edged out of a semi-final berth two years ago.

Tokyo bronze medallists Egberink and Maikel Scheffers will contest their sixth Doubles Masters together and will aim to improve on their third placing in Orlando 2019, when they twice beat first-time semi-finalists Ruben Spaargaren and Jef Vandorpe.

While Schroder and Vink will bid to become the first Dutch player to win the quad title at the Singles Masters, they will also bid to become the first all-Dutch partnership to win the Doubles Masters quad title after Vink won the 2019 trophy alongside Australian Heath Davidson.   

The Tokyo gold medallists and US Open champions are unbeaten since May and have won 14 of their 16 matches this season, their only losses coming in Australia to Alcott and Davidson. Record-breaking 11-time Doubles Masters champions Nick Taylor and Wagner and 2016 champions Antony Cotterill and Andy Lapthorne are also line in the quad doubles, alongside 2019 finalists Kyu-Seung Kim and Koji Sugeno.

All-Dutch partnerships have won four of the last five women’s Doubles Masters titles, with either De Groot or Van Koot part of those victorious pairings before teaming up to win together in 2019. There is little to suggest that they cannot repeat that performance this year, as they arrive in Orlando with just two losses in 15 matches this season.

The last non-Dutch player to share in the women’s Doubles Masters trophy was Lucy Shuker, who partnered De Groot to win in 2016. The following year Shuker teamed-up with Dana Mathewson to reach the semi-finals and the Anglo-American duo pair up again in 2021.

Kamiji and Saki Takamuro bring an all-Japanese challenge this year, their only tournament together so far in 2021 having resulted in them reaching the French Riviera Open Super Series final against De Groot and Van Koot.  

UNIQLO Wheelchair Doubles Masters finals will be held on Saturday, 6 November, while NEC Wheelchair Tennis Singles Masters finals will be held on Sunday, 7 November.

All eight days of the 2021 NEC Wheelchair Singles Masters and UNIQLO Wheelchair Doubles Masters will be available for fans to watch LIVE on the ITF Facebook and YouTube channels, with a feed from Centre Court each day.