World’s Top-Ranked Men’s, Women’s and Quad Players Compete
For $150,000 Purse
The USTA today announced the field for the 2014 US Open Wheelchair Competition. The event, in its eighth year, will be held Sept. 4-7, at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing, N.Y.
The 2014 US Open Wheelchair Competition will feature a Men’s, Women’s and Quad Division, and will include six events: men’s singles, men’s doubles, women’s singles, women’s doubles, quad singles and quad doubles. Wheelchair tennis follows the same rules as able-bodied tennis, except that the ball can bounce twice.
This year’s field will feature 17 of the top wheelchair tennis athletes from around the globe, including the top seven men, top seven women and top three quads, as well as one wild card in each event. Players were selected based on their ITF rankings as of July 21. The total purse for the event will be $150,000.
In the women’s field, top seed Yui Kamiji, 20, of Japan, will look to win her first US Open after becoming the No. 1 player in the world this year in both singles and doubles. Kamiji, who was the top-ranked junior player in 2011, won the singles title at the French Open and doubles titles at the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon this year, meaning that she will be vying for the Grand Slam in doubles. Defending singles and doubles champion Aniek Van Koot, 23, of the Netherlands, will look to win her second consecutive US Open title after taking the reign from six-time US Open singles champion Esther Vergeer, who retired in 2012.
On the men’s side, world No. 1 Shingo Kunieda, 30, also of Japan, will look to win his fifth US Open singles title since 2007. Fellow Japanese player Tayuya Miki, 25, will be the only player in all three fields making a US Open debut.
The United States will be represented by the three-time Paralympic Quad doubles gold medalists David Wagner (Chula Vista, Calif.) and Nick Taylor (Wichita, Kan.) in the quad singles and doubles division. Wagner will be looking to win his third US Open quad singles title, last winning in 2011. Wagner lost to South Africa’s Lucas Sithole last year in three sets and the US Open was not held in 2012, as the Paralympic Games were held that year. In doubles, Wagner and Taylor will look to put their names on the doubles trophy for a sixth time. They are the only team ever to hoist that trophy.
The USTA was officially designated by the USOC as the national governing body for the Paralympic sport of wheelchair tennis in June 2002, becoming the first Olympic national governing body to earn this recognition. As the national governing body for wheelchair tennis, the USTA manages wheelchair tennis in the United States, including the development of local programming, the sanctioning of tournaments, overseeing wheelchair rankings, creating and managing a High Performance program for developing elite disabled athletes, and selecting teams to compete internationally for the United States.
The USTA is the national governing body for the sport of tennis in the United States and the leader in promoting and developing the growth of tennis at every level, from local communities to the highest level of the professional game. A not-for-profit organization with more than 750,000 members, it invests 100 percent of its proceeds in growing the game. It owns and operates the US Open, the highest-attended annual sporting event in the world, and launched the Emirates Airline US Open Series, linking eight summer tournaments to the US Open. In addition, it owns approximately 90 Pro Circuit events throughout the U.S. and selects the teams for the Davis Cup, Fed Cup, Olympic and Paralympic Games. The USTA’s national charitable foundation, USTA Serves, provides grants and scholarships and helps underserved youth and people with disabilities. For more information on the USTA, log on to usta.com, “like” the official Facebook page, facebook.com/usta, or follow @usta on Twitter.
Topics: Shingo Kunieda, Tennis, US Open, Usta, Wheelchair Tennis
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