New Horizons: The 2025 UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Tour in numbers
The 2025 UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Tour has been punctuated with a series of firsts, the crowning of new champions at the higher reaches of the sport, new opportunities at the foundations that ensure the continued development of wheelchair tennis for new generations, and ever-increasing integration with the wider tennis family.
It has also been a season that looks to new horizons and new possibilities, with the 2025 UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Touring being the last to feature an established Tour structure. A new Tour structure for 2026 promises an ever-more exciting future.
Players across all ages and experience levels contested 183 tournaments in 40 countries in 2025, with Kazakhstan a new addition to the roster of nations hosting ITF-sanctioned wheelchair tennis world ranking events.
China’s women’s players among 2025’s star performers
At the top of the sport, China became the latest new country – and the first nation in Asia - to host the season-ending championships, the NEC Wheelchair Singles Masters and UNIQLO Wheelchair Doubles Masters. And, when it comes to China, the nation’s players continued to break new ground.
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China’s women’s players, in particular, excelled. Wang Ziying became the first Chinese player to win a Grand Slam wheelchair singles title following her victory at Wimbledon, while Li Xiaohui became the first Chinese player to win a Super Series singles title after she triumphed at both the Melbourne Open and the Japan Open.
Together, Li and Wang made more history, becoming the first Chinese players to win a Grand Slam wheelchair title after their women’s doubles title at the Australian Open.
Only a deciding match tie-break in the final at Roland Garros prevented Li and Wang from completing the calendar Grand Slam in women’s doubles. But they still end 2025 as the first two Chinese players to top a year-end wheelchair tennis ranking list, with Zhu Zhenzhen completing a Chinese clean sweep of the top three places at the top of the women’s doubles rankings at the end of the year.
Zhu became the first Chinese player to win a Singles Masters or Doubles Masters title when she triumphed alongside Yui Kamiji in Huzhou.
ITF World Champion Kamiji won three of the year’s four Grand Slam women’s singles titles, with fellow Japanese and fellow ITF World Champion Tokito Oda achieving the same in men’s singles after Alfie Hewett started 2025 by winning the Australian Open.
In quad Singles, three players shared the four Grand Slam tiles, with Guy Sasson retaining his Roland Garros title to once again prevent Sam Schroder and Niels Vink from securing a Dutch clean sweep. A two-time Grand Slam singles champion in 2025, Vink also ends the year as ITF World Champion for third time in four years.
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Increased opportunities for junior stars
2025 saw the number of Junior Grand Slam wheelchair tournaments increase to three as the Australian Open joined Roland Garros and the US Open in hosting boys’ and girls’ draws for the sport’s rising stars.
2024 ITF Junior Wheelchair Player of the Year Charlie Cooper became the first boys’ singles champion at Melbourne Park, while Brazil’s Vitoria Miranda became the first girls’ singles champion after edging out the USA’s Sabina Czauz.
Austria’s 17-year-old Maximilian Taucher triumphed in the boys’ singles in Paris and New York, while Miranda and Czauz won the girls’ singles titles, respectively, at both tournaments after Czauz had also finished runner-up to Miranda in Paris.
Outside of the Junior Grand Slam wheelchair draws, 18 ITF Junior Series tournaments were played throughout the year, giving the future generation of potential stars plenty of opportunities to develop their skills.
Due to the advent of the Australian Open Junior Grand Slam and its proximity to the traditional Cruyff Foundation Junior Masters in Tarbes in January, 2025 ended with the new ITF Wheelchair Tennis Junior Masters taking place in Fort Lauderdale, Florida alongside the prestigious Orange Bowl International Championships for non-disabled junior players.
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The integration of the two tournaments gives the leading junior players an added world-class platform on which to continue to develop, with Cooper and Belgium’s Luna Gryp taking the inaugural wheelchair singles titles in Fort Lauderdale.
Outside of the Junior Masters, Taucher, Gryp and Alexander Lantermann led the way for the overall number of wheelchair titles won in junior and senior competition, with Taucher ending 2025 with a total haul of 12 singles titles.
Gryp and fellow Belgian Lantermann, the year-end No. 1 player in the boys’ singles rankings, both end the year with eight titles – one more title than world No. 1 men’s player Oda, who is among the players who end 2025 with seven singles titles.
Lantermann and Taucher end 2025 with the most number of match wins across junior and senior competition this season, having amassed 60 match wins and 58 match wins, respectively.
The continued enhancement of opportunities for junior players in 2025 included giving more players then ever before the opportunity to access junior development with this year’s programme of activities including a camp in Asia for the first time in several years.