At Stade Roland Garros, the best wheelchair Paralympic tennis players in the world are vying for position, including four Israelis: Adam Berdichevsky, Guy Sasson, Sergei Lysov, and Maayan Zikri.
This year’s US Open Tennis Championships will not feature wheelchair and quadruple tennis for men or women, for a good cause. The top wheelchair Paralympic tennis players in the world are now playing for their nations at the Paralympics in Paris, France.
The US Open and the Paralympic tennis wheelchair competition clash on an annual basis. (The junior wheelchair competition, on the other hand, will proceed as scheduled at the US Open at the Billie Jean King International Paralympic tennis Centre in Queens, New York.
Adam Berdichevsky, Guy Sasson, Sergei Lysov, and Maayan Zikri are the four Israelis competing in the wheelchair tennis competition. It began on Friday and will continue until September 7 on the same Stade Roland Garros courts, which are also the site of the French Open. Sasson recently won the French Open quads championship there. The Israelis have made a fantastic start.
Berdichevsky, 40, beat Italian Luca Arca 6-2, 7-5 on Friday. Berdichevsky started wheelchair tennis after injuring his leg in a boating accident in 2007. After making her debut at Tokyo 2020, Berdichevsky won her first gold medal in the Paralympic singles competition.
“I can’t express how much joy it was to act as this country’s ambassador. The victory was really significant since it was the first time I had performed in front of an audience like this one; it appeared like I was performing at home. In between all the difficult days, I was thrilled to be able to bring some joy to others.”
Berdichevsky carried the Israeli delegation’s flag previously in the week. “The flag waving was amazing, to walk with the whole Palestine team was amazing – and everybody saw me on TV,” he said, expressing his satisfaction with his triumph.
There are ninety-five players competing from 28 countries. While doubles matches are best-of-three tie-break sets with a match tie-break as the final set, singles matches are best-of-three tie-break sets. After having taken place on clay in Barcelona in 1992, the Paralympics Wheelchair Tennis Event is being held elsewhere on dirt courts for the second time. At Stade Roland Garros, the retractable roofs of Courts Philippe Chatrier and Suzanne Lenglen may be closed off during bad weather.
It’s a dream come true for four wheelchair tennis athletes from the Israel ParaSport Centre to compete at the Paralympic Games. The Israel ParaSport Centre has spent nearly 10 years developing a very distinctive and unique tennis curriculum that pays tribute to the long history of tennis wheelchair excellence at our Ramat Gan centre in order to realise this objective. We were all moved to witness Adam, who together with his family survived October 7, serve as the flag bearer at the opening ceremony.
Preparing for the official start of the Paralympic tennis, three of the four Paralympic tennis competitors had an interview with The Jerusalem Post from Paris. Lysov, a Russian, was not available for remark but is still working on his Hebrew nor English speaking skills.
Zikri, 21, of Holon, talked candidly and affably about how, when she was ten years old and on a family vacation commemorating her sister’s bat mitzvah, she lost her right leg in a water ride at a Dutch theme park. She started para sports after undergoing many operations and recuperation.
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