With the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics now less than 40 days away, 34 players set for the eighth Paralympic Tennis Event head the entries for the 31st British Open Wheelchair Tennis Championships, which get underway in Nottingham on Tuesday.

The last major tournament on the UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Tour before the world’s best para-athletes arrive in the Japanese capital, this week’s Super Series event is set to feature 18 of the world’s top 20 men’s players, with world No.1 Shingo Kunieda bidding to become the most decorated men’s singles champion here.

Twelve years after his first title in Nottingham, Kunieda’s victory over Gustavo Fernandez in the 2019 final put him on seven British Open titles, the same number as Australia’s David Hall. Kunieda, 2017 champion Fernandez, Joachim Gerard, Stephane Houdet and Maikel Scheffers are all former British Open champions vying for this year’s title, with reigning Australian Open and Wimbledon champion Gerard returning to Nottingham as a two-time Grand Slam champion eight years after sealing his one and only British Open title to date.

In 30 previous editions of the British Open there has been no British men’s singles champion, but Alfie Hewett and Gordon Reid will both hope to put that right as they seek to continue successful seasons and bid to go one better than their previous bests in Nottingham. Hewett finished runner-up to Fernandez in 2017, while Reid’s two previous British Open finals ended in defeat to Kunieda in 2012 and 2014

While Kunieda is bidding for his seventh British Open title, one of the players to look out for is Kunieda’s 15-year-old countryman Tokito Oda. Oda makes his British Open debut in the latest chapter of a remarkable season for the world No.1 junior, who claimed his first ITF 1 Series men’s singles title on Saturday at the Swiss Open.

Diede de Groot sealed her third Wimbledon title just over a week ago and the world No. 1 will now bid to complete a hat-trick of British Open women’s singles titles, having beaten Yui Kamiji and Marjolein Buis in the 2018 and 2019 finals in Nottingham, respectively.

With world No. 2 Kamiji not contesting this year’s British Open and Buis having retired, De Groot’s biggest challenge this year should, on paper, come from fellow Dutchwoman and world No. 3 Aniek van Koot or world No. 4 Jordanne Whiley.

Whiley’s only two Super Series singles titles to date came at the British Open in 2015 and 2016, where she beat Jiske Griffioen in both of her semi-finals and Van Koot in both finals. Whiley missed the Nottingham tournament in 2017 and 2018 while on maternity leave, making her return in 2019 when she took De Groot to three sets in the quarter-finals.

Whiley arrives at this year’s British Open having beaten Van Koot in the quarter-finals at Wimbledon before meeting De Groot in the semi-finals.

For all their career successes, neither Griffioen nor Van Koot have a British Open singles title to their name, despite the two former world No. 1 players having a string of final appearances between them.  

Rio Paralympic champion Griffioen, who retired from the sport in 2017 before launching a comeback in the second half of 2019, arrives in Nottingham this year buoyed by her first ITF 1 title since 2014, having won the Swiss Open women's singles title over the weekend.

Also arriving in Nottingham on the back of victory at the Swiss Open is Niels Vink. The 18-year-old Dutchman made a spectacular British Open debut in 2019, winning his first Super Series quad singles title in his first ever Super Series event, defeating Japan’s Koji Sugeno in the semi-finals and Brit Andy Lapthorne in the final.

Both world No. 6 Sugeno and world No. 3 Lapthorne will be among Vink’s biggest challengers this year as he seeks to make it back-to-back British Open titles.

While Vink arrives in Nottingham as a top 4 ranked player for the first time, he is not the highest ranked Dutch player in the field. That distinction goes to Sam Schroder, who reached a career-high of world No. 2 after finishing runner-up to Dylan Alcott recent at Wimbledon. But with Alcott not competing for this year’s British Open title, Schroder will have designs on succeeding Vink as a Dutch champion.

Vink’s victory at the Swiss Open came after beating the USA’s David Wagner in the quad singles final. Wagner now returns to Nottingham hunting for his fifth British Open crown, having won his first in 2008 and his fourth and most recent title in 2018.