Netherlands power to fourth BNP Paribas World Team Cup quad title
Netherlands earned their third successive BNP Paribas World Team Cup quad title on Saturday after Sam Schroder and Niels Vink beat Israel 2-0 at Vilamoura Tennis and Padel Academy in Portugal.
After successive finals against USA and South Africa, Israel were new opponents in the title decider for Schroder and Vink, with Schroder having never faced London 2012 gold medallist Noam Gershony before in singles competition and Guy Sasson a new addition to Israel’s quad wheelchair tennis team this year.
However, world No.2 Schroder wasted little time in warming to the task against former world No. 1 Gershony and earned the first break for a 3-1 as Gershony’s attempt at a drop shot caught the net and dropped back on to the Israeli side of the court.
From then onwards Schroder rarely looked in too much trouble, despite relinquishing a 2-0 second set lead.
At 5-2 down Gershony saved three match points, the third the result of an obliging net cord, and broke Schroder’s serve to love make it 5-4 as he demonstrated the kind of tennis that took him to the top of the rankings a little over a decade ago. But Schroder earned three more match points on his own serve and at the sixth time of asking he put away a backhand winner to close out a 6-4 6-1 win.
Vink proved equally as dominant in the opening exchanges of his match against Sasson, whose cause was not helped by some untimely double faults, including on set point in the first set.
Sasson broke the Vink serve for just the second time to provide some glimmer of hope at 2-1 down in the second. However, another double fault gave the Dutchman three match points and Sasson missed his target with a topspin backhand to hand Vink a 6-2 6-2 win and give Netherlands the victory after 61 minutes, the same length of time that it had taken Schroder to beat Gershony.
“We’re very happy to win again for the third time in a row,” said Schroder after a fourth quad title since 2008 for Netherlands at the ITF's flagship wheelchir tennis team event.
“We’d never played against the Israeli players before so we knew it was going to be a tough couple of matches, but I think we both played very well today and we’re really happy with the win.”
“We just tried to play to our own strengths and then see during the match if anything from our opponents’ side shows up. But we were both able to win on our own terms.”
With Schroder now heading to Roland Garros next month, where Vink will once again be among his major opposition as well as his doubles partner, the 23-year-old added:
“It’s a lot of fun (playing in the same team as Vink). We’ve been playing very relaxed matches, cheering each other on and then playing doubles together, so it’s been another great week. The weather’s been great, it’s been great food and there’s nothing more you can wish for. I’m now going to try and practice as much as possible on clay at home.
“We just watched the juniors win the bronze medal and we still have the women’s final later, then tomorrow it’s the men with a tough final against Great Britain and we’ll try and support them as much as we can.”