USTA Announces Field for 2014 U.S. Open Wheelchair Competition
The USTA has announced the field for the 2014 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 20-year-old Yui Kamiji of Japan, will look to win her first U.S. Open after becoming the number one 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 of the Netherlands will look to win her second consecutive U.S. Open title after taking the reign from six-time U.S. Open singles champion Esther Vergeer, who retired in 2012.
On the men’s side, world number one Shingo Kunieda, 30, also of Japan, will look to win his fifth U.S. Open singles title since 2007. Fellow Japanese player Tayuya Miki, 25, will be the only player in all three fields making a U.S. Open debut.
The United States will be represented by the three-time Paralympic Quad Doubles Gold Medalists David Wagner from Chula Vista, Calif. and Nick Taylor from Wichita, Kan. in the Quad Singles and Doubles Division. Wagner will be looking to win his third U.S. Open Quad Singles Title, last winning in 2011. Wagner lost to South Africa’s Lucas Sithole last year in three sets and the U.S. 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.
