US Open 2009

[Haggie]

Vergeer and other top wheelchair players back at Open as event returns
Thursday, September 10, 2009
By Jeff Gold

Esther Vergeer said the sobering words with a smile on her face.

“I know that will not walk for 50 more years,” Vergeer said.

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t quite hear you,” a reporter responded. “Did you say fifteen, 1-5, or fifty, 5-0.”

“Fifty, 5-0. Fifty more years,” she stated again. “Fifty years.”

She also might not lose a tennis match for another fifty years. Vergeer, 28, is the best women’s wheelchair tennis player in the world. She has won 373 straight matches, a streak that dates back to 2003.

“If you say so,” she said when updated on her streak. “I’m not counting. I don’t play for that.”

What she plays for is to keep in shape, to compete, to improve and to provide inspiration. Shake her hand, and you’ll feel one of the strongest grips you will ever experience.

She has that opportunity at the US Open this year after a one-year hiatus because of last year’s Paralympic Games in Beijing. It is the fourth year of the event, and one that has grown tremendously in terms of sponsorship and overall interest. Vergeer won the title two years ago. The total purse of this year’s Open is $100,000. Vergeer estimated that she makes close to $40,000 a year from prize money in tennis.

Vergeer, who is from the Netherlands, has been in a wheelchair since she was nine years old. She had a spinal defect that doctors needed to operate on because she was experience repeated strokes as a child.

“It was like a time bomb in my body waiting to go off,” Vergeer said. “The surgery was absolutely necessary.”

Initially, doctors thought the procedure had gone well. But during rehab, they noticed her legs weren’t responding to stimulants, and it soon became apparent that she would need to be in a wheelchair.

What followed has been remarkable. A gifted athlete, she took up basketball, tennis and various other winter sports before deciding to focus exclusively on tennis.

She wouldn’t agree to the suggestion that she has completely mastered wheelchair tennis, but she has come pretty close. She has a nasty kick and slice serve, her forehand has pace and top spin, her backhand has a slick slice. And she creates angles with short balls that make you shake your head.

Vergeer extended her winning streak by beating Florence Gravellier Thursday 6-2, 7-5 in an entertaining match on Louis Armstrong Stadium, the court where all the tennis greats have played for the last 30 years.

She is one of them.

While Vergeer played on a show court, it was a busy day across the grounds for all wheelchair players, and an early match on Court 11 was especially entertaining.

Warm-up sessions between Nick Taylor and David Wagner are worth watching. The doubles partners take sides on opposite ends of the court and start trash talking.

“We try to hit it right at the other one hard enough that it will hit them in their body,” Wagner said. “I want to drill him.”