Esther Vergeer Shares Her 400th Win With 10sballs.com

Written by: Resendiz on 26th September 2011

Esther Vergeer Shares Her 400th Win With 10sballs.com |

(Bio via Wikipedia)

Esther Vergeer (born 18 July 1981, Woerden) is a Dutch wheelchair tennis player. Combining singles and doubles, she has won 39 Grand Slams, 21 year-end championships and 5 Paralympics titles. Vergeer has been the world number one wheel chair tennis player since 1999. In singles, she has not been beaten since January 2003 and is on a winning streak of 429 matches. She is often mentioned as the most dominant player in professional sports.

Vergeer developed paraplegia when she was 8 years old due to an otherwise successful, very risky surgery concerning hemorrhaging blood vessels around her spinal cord. During rehabilitation she learned to play volleyball, basketball, and tennis in a wheelchair. After playing basketball for several years at club level, she was invited to join the national wheelchair basketball team. She played with the Dutch team that won the European championship in 1997.

Vergeer had started playing tennis in parallel with basketball, playing her first international tournament in 1996, and switched to full-time tennis in 1998. Coached by Marc Kalkman, her first big win was at the US Open championships in 1998, moving her from 15th to 2nd in the world ranking. She beat top seed Daniela Di Toro to win the singles title and partnered with Sonja Peters to capture the doubles. Her success led to a photo in the 26 November 1998 TennisWeek issue. She continued on and during the 2000 Summer Paralympics in Sydney she did not lose a set to win the gold medal in singles and also won the doubles title with Maaike Smit as her partner. She also won the Wheelchair Tennis masters in 1998.

To read more about Esther Vergeer check out her wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_Vergeer