Tokyo medallists to meet in Singles and Doubles Masters groups
Former champions Yui Kamiji and Aniek van Koot and former finalists Alfie Hewett and Gordon Reid will meet in the group stages of the men’s and women’s singles after the round-robin draws were made on Saturday for the NEC Wheelchair Singles Masters and UNIQLO Wheelchair Doubles Masters at the USTA National Campus in Orlando, Florida.
The first Singles Masters quad draw to feature eight players will also see 11-time champion David Wagner face top seed Sam Schroder, while the Wheelchair Doubles Masters draw sees Tokyo 2020 men’s silver medallists Hewett and Reid in the same group as Tokyo bronze medallists Tom Egberink and Maikel Scheffers.
Kamiji became the first and, so far, the only non-Dutch player to lift the women’s singles title in 2013 before fellow multiple finalist Van Koot became women’s champion a year later, in 2014.
With the top two players from each of the women’s, men’s and quad singles round-robin groups going forward to the semi-finals. Kamiji and Van Koot will also play Chinese player Zhenzhen Zhu and NEC Singles Masters debutante Macarena Cabrillana in their group.
World No. 1 Diede de Groot will start her quest for a fourth successive Singles Masters title with round-robin matches against fellow Wimbledon finalist Kgothatso Montjane, USA home favourite Dana Mathewson and Momoko Ohtani, who beat De Groot in the 2020 Roland Garros semi-finals.
Hewett and Reid contested the 2017 men’s final at the Singles Masters, which Hewett won to become the youngest ever men’s champion. They also met in the Tokyo Paralympic bronze medal match, which Reid won, and as well as playing each other in Orlando the two Brits are drawn to play Nicolas Peifer and Singles Masters first-timer Martin de la Puente in their group.
The other men’s singles group will see world No. 4 Gustavo Fernandez face Tokyo Paralympic silver medallist Tom Egberink, 2011 Masters champion Stephane Houdet and Takuya Miki, who joins Egberink in also making his Singles Masters debut.
Both USA players are drawn in the same quad singles round-robin group, with Wagner set to play countryman Bryan Barten, as well as world No. 2 Schroder and Ymanitu Silva.
Tokyo silver medallist Niels Vink, runner-up to Wagner in Orlando in 2019, plays four-time Masters finalist Andy Lapthorne, Koji Sugeno and Kyu-Seung Kim in his quest to reach this year’s semi-finals.
Tokyo medallists to meet in UNIQLO Doubles Masters groups
Hewett and Reid, the 2017 men’s champions, won a tense three-set round-robin match when they met Egberink and Scheffers in the group phase of the UNIQLO Wheelchair Doubles Masters in 2019 and the Tokyo silver and bronze medallists will go head-to-head once again in Orlando.
USA partnership Chris Herman and Conner Stroud and Alexander Cataldo and Casey Ratzlaff will be the opponents for the British and Dutch partnerships, with the top two partnerships after the round-robin matches advancing to the last four.
Hewett and Reid were edged out of the 2019 men’s doubles semi-finals by Ruben Spaargaren and Jef Vandorpe, but Spaargaren and Vandorpe are not in the same group as the Brits this year.
Instead, they will play French second seeds Houdet and Nicolas Peifer, winners of three of the last four Doubles Masters titles, as well as Fernandez and De la Puente and Doubles Masters debutants Dermot Bailey and Tokito Oda.
De Groot and Van Koot, winners of three of this year’s four Grand Slam titles, will begin their bid for back-to-back Doubles Masters titles with round-robin matches against the South American partnership of Angelica Bernal and Maria Florencia Moreno and Macarena Cabrillana and Kgothatso Montjane.
The all-Japanese partnership of Kamiji and Saki Takamuro, French Riviera Open finalists against De Groot and Van Koot earlier this year, will hope to head the other women’s group after round-robin matches against 2017 Doubles Masters semi-finalists Lucy Shuker and Mathewson and Ohtani and Zhu, with two of the three partnerships advancing to the semi-finals.
The quad doubles will start as a four-way round-robin group competition, with the top two pairings after the round-robin stage going forward to play each other again in the final.
Tokyo Paralympic gold medallists Schroder and Vink bid for their first Doubles Masters title against 2016 champions Antony Cotterill and Lapthorne, 11-time champions Nick Taylor and Wagner and 2019 finalists Kim and Sugeno, who once again pair up in doubles as well as being drawn to meet each other in the same singles round-robin group.