British trio reach Doubles Masters semi-finals
Gordon Reid, Lucy Shuker and Jordanne Whiley will all feature in Sunday’s doubles semi-finals at the ITF Wheelchair Doubles Masters in Mission Viejo, California after Reid and Shuker and their respective partners won their final round-robin pool matches on Saturday.
Shuker and Whiley will be on opposite sides of the net in the women’s doubles semi-finals, guaranteeing that there will be a Brit in at least one of Monday’s finals. The contest will be a repeat of July’s Wimbledon doubles semi-final as Whiley and Japan’s Yui Kamiji take on Australia Open runners-up Shuker and her Dutch partner Marjolein Buis. Whiley and Kamiji won at Wimbledon to reach their first Grand Slam final together.
Shuker and Buis beat Britain’s Louise Hunt and Japan’s Miho Nijo 6-4, 6-3 in their final doubles match on Saturday to finish runners-up in their pool, with top seeds Whiley and Kamiji having already won their pool before the last day of the round-robin phase of the competition. Shuker, who is currently world No.6 in doubles, said:
“I’ve been to three Doubles Masters finals before, including one partnering Jordanne, so to get the chance to try and reach another with two Brits in the semi-finals is very exciting,” After Wimbledon we know it will be tough, but hopefully we can produce the kind of form that took me and Marjolein to our first Grand Slam final together in Melbourne and our first Super Series title together at the South African Open in April.”
Hunt and Nijo will play Germany’s Katharina Kruger and Chile’s Francisca Mardones for fifth place in the women’s doubles.
Reid and his French partner Stephane Houdet earned a 6-2, 6-1 win over Britain’s Marc McCarroll and American Steve Welch in their third and final men’s doubles round-robin match to finish top of their pool. The top seeds will face Dutch second seeds Maikel Scheffers and Ronald Vink for a place in the final after three–time Doubles Masters champions Scheffers and Vink were runners-up in the other pool.
Meanwhile, Whiley will play Buis for third place in the women’s singles at the NEC Wheelchair Tennis Masters, which is also taking place in Mission Viejo this week after Shuker finished eighth in the women’s singles and Reid finished sixth in the men’s singles.
After becoming the first Brit to reach the women’s singles semi-finals at the NEC Masters, world No. 7 Whiley was unable to beat Dutch world No. 3 and defending champion Jiske Griffioen for the second time this season, with Griffioen advancing to the final 6-2, 6-0.
World No. 8 Shuker played South Africa’s world No. 6 Kgothatso Montjane in the women’s singles play-off for seventh place for the second year in a row, with Montjane prevailing 6-3, 6-4.
Meanwhile, having narrowly missed out on a place in the men’s singles semi-finals, world No. 4 Reid had another closely fought contest for fifth place in the men’s singles, but Frenchman Michael Jeremiasz eventually prevailed 6-3, 4-6, 7-5.
And there will be two Brits in the seventh place play-off in the men’s doubles after Jeremiasz and his fellow Frenchman Nicolas Peifer beat David Phillipson and Japan’s Yoshinobu Fujimoto 6-1, 6-0 on Saturday's final day of doubles round-robin competition. Phillipson and Fujimoto will now play McCarroll and Welch.
Antony Cotterill and Adam Field will also bid for their second win of the week over Canada’s Adrian Dieleman and Italy’s Antonio Raffaele after missing out on a place in the quad doubles final. Cotterill and Field lost 6-1, 6-3 to American Greg Hasterok and Canadian Sarah Hunter in their last round-robin match and will now face Dieleman and Raffaele for third place.
A total of nine Brits from the Tennis Foundation’s Wheelchair Tennis Performance Programme are contesting the NEC Wheelchair Tennis Masters and the ITF Wheelchair Doubles Masters in Mission Viejo from 5 - 11 November.
