Preview: 2023 US Open Wheelchair Championships | ITF (2024)

Another record-breaking season for wheelchair tennis at the Grand Slams is set to continue this week with the 2023 US Open Wheelchair Championships becoming the first of the four majors to feature draw sizes of 16 players for each of the men’s, women’s and quad singles.

The expanded draw size for the quad division in New York will see new nations added to list of those countries that have contested wheelchair draws at the majors, but more records could well be set in the men’s and women’s singles, too, as world No.1 players Tokito Oda and Diede de Groot look to add to their history-making exploits.

Already the youngest man to win a Grand Slam singles title in any discipline and the youngest man to win a Wimbledon singles title in any discipline, 17-year-old world No. 1 Oda could now become the youngest man to win a US Open singles title in any discipline.

So far this year Oda has contested each of the Australian Open, Roland Garros and Wimbledon men’s singles finals against Alfie Hewett, succeeding Hewett as the sport’s youngest men’s singles world No. 1 following his victory in Paris in June.

He will begin his quest to add the US Open title with a first round match against two-time champion Stephane Houdet on Tuesday in New York, while Hewett will face Tom Egberink, the player the Briton beat in the quarter-finals last year on his way to his third US Open singles title. Hewett has a remarkable record in New York since making his US Open debut in 2017, reaching the finals of the men’s singles and men’s doubles in each of the last six years and amassing eight titles across both events.

Elsewhere in the men’s singles draw, first-round match-ups include world No. 3 Gustavo Fernandez’s latest meeting with world No. 5 Joachim Gerard, while fourth seed Martin de la Puente will play Japan’s Takashi Sanada.

Sanada will make his US Open debut this week, while USA’s Conner Stroud will not only make his US Open debut, bus also his Grand Slam debut when he takes on Sanada’s countryman Takuya Miki.

De Groot on course for third successive calendar Grand Slam

While Hewett’s singles record in New York is impressive, Diede de Groot’s win-loss is even better, having also made her US Open debut in 2017.

De Groot has only failed to lift the women’s singles title once – on her debut, when she finished runner-up to world No.2 Yui Kamiji – while she has also won five of the six doubles finals she has contested.

Now unbeaten in 118 matches since the start of the 2021 Australian Open, the five-time US Open champion will bid to complete an unprecedented third successive calendar Grand Slam this week – her first in 2021 culminating in the Dutchwoman becoming the first female wheelchair player to win the Golden Slam after her fourth US Open title came just a week after she won the Tokyo Paralympic gold medal.

De Groot’s 2023 US Open campaign will begin against Pauline Deroulede, whose last tournament ended with the Frenchwoman reaching her first ITF 1 singles final at July’s Swiss Open.

Kamiji will begin her bid for a third US Open women’s singles title with a contest against USA’s Dana Mathewson, while the remaining six women’s first round matches include world No. 4 Momoko Ohtani’s latest meeting with world No. 5 Zhenzhen Zhu.

Elsewhere, Argentina’s Maria Florencia Moreno will make her US Open against South Africa’s Kgothatso Montjane and Lizzy de Greef will complete a quartet of Dutch players in the women’s draw as the 19-year-old makes her Grand Slam debut against her compatriot Aniek van Koot, who won her only US Open singles title to date 10 years ago this year.

Vink and Schroder head record Grand Slam quad draw

While Oda and Hewett, the world’s top two ranked players, have contested all three Grand Slam men’s singles finals so far this season, with world No.2 Hewett winning the first of those title deciders in Australia, a similar rivalry is even longer established at the top of the quad singles rankings.

Sam Schroder and Niels Vink have contested five of the last six Grand Slam quad singles finals between them, and while Schroder returns to New York three years on from winning his first Grand Slam singles title at the 2020 US Open, Vink is the defending champion.

Schroder added a fourth singles title at the majors at Melbourne Park earlier this year, his second Australian Open victory proving significant for being the only singles loss this year for world No.1 Niels Vink.

Vink has won 38 of his 39 singles matches this season and while he and Schroder will start their US Open campaigns as favourites to reach the final again, world No. 5 Heath Davidson will also have designs on the title after defeating Schroder to reach this year’s Wimbledon final.

Vink will play Chile’s Francisco Cayulef in his opening match in New York on Tuesday, when Schroder also faces Ahmet Kaplan and Davidson takes on Ugur Altinel. Cayulef and both Altinel and Kaplan will make their Grand Slam debuts this week as Turkey becomes one of the latest nations to be represented in senior Grand Slam wheelchair competition following the expansion of the quad draw to 16 players.

Also making their Grand Slam debuts will be world No. 7 Guy Sasson of Israel and world No. 12 Tomas Masaryk of Slovakia, who are among those who go head-to-head for a place in the quarter-finals.

The US Open wheelchair doubles draws will be published on Tuesday.