ITF Wheelchair Tour 2025

indiana · Tennis legend

ITF Wheelchair Tour 2025

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

indiana wrote:
Well done to Greg.

Wheelchair tennis doesn't much interest me but kudos Jon for your ongoing enthusiasm, promotion and details.

Its a bit like Lambda with the college stuff, you sort of get into it! And thank you !

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

Greg is also in the quad doubles final, with David Wagner, who is also his singles final opponent.

Lucy Shuker also made the womens doubles final with her French partner, Pauline Derouloude

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

Greg and Lucy play their respective doubles finals today; Gregs singles final is Sunday.

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

March has a lot of action coming up- first there is the Series 1 level Georgia Open in Atlanta, followed straightaway by the Super Series event in Baton Rouge. Both of these events should be filled with the top players and are sort of a similar couple of back to backs like the IW and Miami main tour events.

The BNP Paribas World Cup regional qualifiers have been taking place this week and the European qualies in Türkiye takes place mid March, straight after the Baton Rouge event. Im not entirely sure which of our teams will be playing in those, and am pretty sure the men for one are straight into the World Cup finals. Ill need to do some research!

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

JonH comes home wrote:
Greg and Lucy play their respective doubles finals today; Gregs singles final is Sunday.

Greg lost his final in the doubles; singles tomorrow with his partner from this week, David Wagner, across the net.

No result showing for Lucys doubles final.

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

Fabulous, as Greg Slade takes the quad singles title here, unseeded he beats David Wagner in the final, top 10 player. Second title in two weeks in Bolton as well as doubles last week!

Tanaqui · Club Coach

Well done, Greg!

What an amazing couple of weeks for him.

Jon, you know more about these things. Do you think GB has another wheelchair tennis superstar in the making, as per Gordon, Alfie and Andy? (I see Greg partnered Andy at the paralympics last year.)

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

Thats an interesting question - Greg is only 22 in a sport where many of the top players are actually in their mid to late 30s and even 40s. Quads as a genre is reasonably new and getting stronger by the year - many of the top players are physically very strong relatively as they have to be and this comes with age, in part, and Greg is a young man. That said, he started in around 2020, and has improved year on year but not spectacularly. This is a big deal today, and he should continue to improve. How high he will get is hard to see but he has many years ahead of him and Id say easily top 10 and probably top 5 eventually, and maybe some slam titles in the future.

So yes, but who knows?

Tanaqui · Club Coach

Thanks for the detailed reply, Jon. My question was indeed partly prompted by notiicing that Greg is still pretty young while having a vague awareness that the top players are generally much older (not least because of how long some have been at the top!) I'll definitely be watching out for Greg's name to see how he progresses now.

9vicman · Satellite level

JonH comes home wrote:
Thats an interesting question - Greg is only 22 in a sport where many of the top players are actually in their mid to late 30s and even 40s. Quads as a genre is reasonably new and getting stronger by the year - many of the top players are physically very strong relatively as they have to be and this comes with age, in part, and Greg is a young man. That said, he started in around 2020, and has improved year on year but not spectacularly. This is a big deal today, and he should continue to improve. How high he will get is hard to see but he has many years ahead of him and Id say easily top 10 and probably top 5 eventually, and maybe some slam titles in the future.

So yes, but who knows?

It's an interesting one. The quad world No. 1 is also 22, and the men's world No. 1 is 18. Players can have very long careers, but would be interesting to see the ages that players first break through.

An encouraging couple of weeks for Greg, but when you look who he beat, former world No. 1 David Wagner lost to another Brit Oliver Cox the previous week, and Diego Perez is coming back from injury.

So am not sure these results show anything in particular.

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

9vicman wrote:
JonH comes home wrote:
Thats an interesting question - Greg is only 22 in a sport where many of the top players are actually in their mid to late 30s and even 40s. Quads as a genre is reasonably new and getting stronger by the year - many of the top players are physically very strong relatively as they have to be and this comes with age, in part, and Greg is a young man. That said, he started in around 2020, and has improved year on year but not spectacularly. This is a big deal today, and he should continue to improve. How high he will get is hard to see but he has many years ahead of him and Id say easily top 10 and probably top 5 eventually, and maybe some slam titles in the future.

So yes, but who knows?
It's an interesting one. The quad world No. 1 is also 22, and the men's world No. 1 is 18. Players can have very long careers, but would be interesting to see the ages that players first break through.
An encouraging couple of weeks for Greg, but when you look who he beat, former world No. 1 David Wagner lost to another Brit Oliver Cox the previous week, and Diego Perez is coming back from injury.
So am not sure these results show anything in particular.

Yep, agree / it is hard to tell where Greg will get to and his progress to date has been steady but not spectacular. I realise Wagner lost to Oli, but think Greg still can consider these past two weeks a breakthrough. He won the series 3 event last year so wont see any points boost for winning that again, but the series 2 event will see him rise, maybe to around 15, and that should get him into the slams. If he does that, the opportunity to rise further is there, as the slam level players have an inbuilt advantage from playing those events- slam level is the barrier for me; hence why I think he can make top 10 - hes already top 10 in doubles - in singles.

dont think he will ever be another Alfie, or maybe even Andy Lapthorne, but do think top 10 or maybe more; I said win a slam above, not sure that is more than me being positive after his titles, but still. Well done to him for last week!

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

The Bolton Series 2 event points must go onto next weeks rankings as Greg is only showing the series 3 points in his updated tally

www.itftennis.com/en/players/gregory-slade/800592709/gbr/wct/s/itf-points-breakdown/

He won that title last year also, so he sees just a 1 place rise this week from 20 to 19. Hopefully a few more places next week once the S2 points go on.

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

The direct entries for the Wheelchair World Cup in May, in Turkey, are out and GB has direct entry for the men's, women's and quad events, but not the juniors

There are 4 wild card entries - as opposed to qualification entries - for the juniors and I would expect we would get one of those; we have won this event recently and have a strong team, so it would be strange not to see us there

www.itftennis.com/media/13922/2025-world-group-direct-entry-list.pdf

The Japanese squads are the biggest missing at this stage; they sent very weak teams last year, possibly due to the Paralympics being a bigger target, or maybe there was another reason? Either way, I think they are due to play the Asian qualifiers starting tomorrow and it will be interesting to see what squad they send to those this year.