Oda, Kamiji and Schroder seal 2025 NEC Singles Masters titles in China
Tokito Oda’s decision to only play singles at the 2025 NEC Wheelchair Singles Masters and UNIQLO Wheelchair Doubles Masters certainly paid dividends after the world No.1 produced one of his most impressive performance on the 2025 UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Tour to join Yui Kamiji and Sam Schroder on the roll of honour in Huzhou.
Oda dropped no more than three games in any set in his three round-robin group matches, his reflex no-look backhand drop shot against world No.3 Gustavo Fernandez in a 6-3, 6-2 win on the second day of play underpinning the 19-year-old’s prodigious talent.
After losing the Australian Open final to Alfie Hewett at the end of January, Oda has subsequently built a 28-match winning streak with which to end the season.
He rightly referred to an ‘amazing year’ in his on-court interview after his 6-1, 6-1 victory over world No.2 Hewett in this year’s Singles Masters final – his most dominant win over the British second seed in their 22-match head-to-head career history to date.
Oda was by no means the only player to decide to concentrate only on the men’s singles in Houzhou, but it was a decision maybe informed by his experience of the only other previous NEC Masters to be held on clay, in Barcelona in 2023.
Fernandez also made the decision not to participate in the UNIQLO Wheelchair Doubles Masters this year, but with Fernandez having ended Oda’s Singles Masters challenge in the semi-finals on the clay in Barcelona in 2023, there was to be no repeat as Oda joined Hewett and his childhood hero, Shingo Kunieda, among the players to have won three Singles Masters titles at the year-end championships.
For the second year in a row there was a Japanese double in the men’s and women’s singles as Yui Kamiji also lifted her third women’s singles title to maintain the distinction of being the only non-Dutch player to have won the women’s title at the Singles Masters.
Kamiji’s 6-2, 6-2 victory over Li Xiaohui was something of a statement win, with Li having beaten Kamiji 7-5, 6-7(5) 6-3 in their opening round-robin match of the week and Li having also beaten Kamiji in the finals of the Melbourne Open and the Japan Open earlier in the year.
However, come the title decider it was Kamiji’s turn to beat Li in her opponent’s home country and while Kamiji used her on-court trophy acceptance speech to say how happy she was to win the title in Asia, she also expressed a hope to also play the Singles and Doubles Masters in Japan one day.
Following her maiden victory in 2013, Kamiji was already on an illustrious list of players to have won both Singles and Doubles Masters titles in the same year, but is now part of an even more exclusive list of players to have done it twice.
Among those players to have won Singles Masters and Doubles Masters titles in the same year twice is Niels Vink, but the world No. 1’s hopes of doing so in the quad singles this year went no further than the Singles Masters semis, where he was beaten by none other than his doubles partner Guy Sasson.
Bidding to join 2012 champion and fellow Israeli Noam Gershony on the Singles Masters roll of honour, world No. 3 Sasson made a fine start against world No. 2 Sam Schroder as he reeled off four games in a row in the final.
However, Schroder replied with seven successive games without reply and that proved the catalyst for a second Singles Masters title since 2022 as the second seed wrapped up a 6-4, 6-3 victory after an hour and 33 minutes.