Wheelchair tennis legend Esther Vergeer reflects on the surgery that changed her life as a young child, and sparked a can-do mentality of perseverance in the debut episode of 2023 Road to Newport by the International Tennis Hall of Fame. 

Vergeer, alongside fellow wheelchair tennis champion (and pioneer of the Quad division) Rick Draney, will be inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame on Saturday 22 July in Newport, Rhode Island.

In the run up to the Enshrinement weekend, the ITHF is releasing a short-form video series featuring the Class of 2023 inductees, with a new episode set to drop every Tuesday and Thursday on the ITHF's social channels. The full series will be made available here.

Vergeer, who was paralysed at the age of eight, takes viewers inside her dominant performances at the Paralympic Games, and gives insight into her desire to improve her game through equipment and coaching, in which she became the first wheelchair tennis athlete to work with renowned tennis coach Sven Groeneveld.

The Dutchwoman ultimately proved peerless in wheelchair tennis, amassing 470 consecutive singles wins, collecting 169 titles and claiming seven gold medals - across singles and doubles - at the Paralympic Games between 2000 and 2012. 

Draney, meanwhile, used tennis to re-discover his thirst for competition after an accident left him paralysed in his late teens. Alongside fellow hall of famer Brad Parks, he went on to revolutionise what would become the Quad division in wheelchair tennis. He opens up about the life-altering accident that changed his world, and ultimately became a driving force.