Taylor-Wagner earn one last Doubles Masters final in Orlando
After the second of Nick Taylor and David Wagner’s three quad round-robin group matches at the 2021 UNIQLO Wheelchair Doubles Masters the 11-time champions were without a win, but Taylor believed that there was a ‘mathematical chance’ that he and Wagner could still reach the final if they won their third and last match in Orlando.
In the 48 hours between their second and third group matches at the USTA National Campus, Taylor became increasingly convinced that this was the case, but going out and doing it is a completely different thing.
However that is exactly what the American duo accomplished in the early evening on the fifth day of competition after defeating 2019 finalists Kyu-Seung Kim and Koji Sugeno 6-0 6-4.
“The way my brain works, I knew (that is was a possibility),” said Taylor after extending his impending retirement from wheelchair tennis to one more match.
“I analyse everything and in the middle of the afternoon yesterday I actually had a bit of a happy epiphany as I originally thought we had to win in straight sets, and then I thought even if we did that it was still going to be tied between us and Kim and Kojo and then it was going to come down to games, so I was like ‘we have to win 6-0 6-1 or something like that.
“Then, last night at dinner I realised that all we had to do was win in straight sets and then we had them (Kim and Sugeno) by one set. I didn’t want to tell David over text last night, so I told him this morning,” added Taylor.
“I did confirm that with the referee four times before I did any post-match interviews that we are in the final, but we are. My motto in my head all day was ‘one more, just one more’ and I got a little bit nervous in the second set that we were going to give up a set. I knew we could win the match, but I was afraid we would give up a set. But David played unreal, I was very happy with how I played and we did what we had to do.”
Taylor and Wagner will now analyse how they can improve on their 6-1 6-0 loss to Dutch top seeds Sam Schroder and Niels Vink in their round-robin group match after Schroder and Vink finished top of the group following their 6-0 6-0 win over 2016 champions Antony Cotterill and Andy Lapthorne.
Men's Doubles
The Doubles Masters men’s title will return to Great Britain or France and one of two sets of previous champions after top seeds Alfie Hewett and Gordon Reid beat the Dutch-Belgian partnership of Ruben Spaargaren and Jef Vandorpe 7-6 6-3 in their semi-final.
By beating Spaargaren and Vandorpe, 2017 Doubles Masters champions Hewett and Reid avenged their loss to the same partnership in their round-robin group contest in 2019, a loss that kept Hewett and Reid out of the semi-finals two years ago.
Winners of the men’s title three times in the last four years, top seeds Stephane Houdet and Nicolas Peifer will aim for their fourth title after the Toko Paralympic gold medallists beat Dutch bronze medallists Tom Egberink and Maikel Scheffers 7-5 6-2.
Women's Doubles
Meanwhile, Diede de Groot and Aniek van Koot will bid to make it back-to-back women’s titles after the top seeds won their semi-final against 2017 semi-finalists Dana Mathewson and Lucy Shuker 6-1, 6-2, closing out a comprehensive win with a service break to love.
De Groot and Van Koot will play the Japanese-Chinese pairing of Momoko Ohtani and Zhenzhen Zhu for the title after Ohtani and Zhu’s 6-4 6-3 semi-final victory over Macarena Cabrillana and Kgothatso Montjane.