Reid and Whiley reach Doubles Masters finals
Gordon Reid and Jordanne Whiley will contest Monday's men's and women's doubles finals when the ITF Wheelchair Doubles Masters come to an end in Mission Viejo, California after partnering Stephane Houdet and Yui Kamiji respectively to straight sets wins in Sunday's semi-finals.
Reid has reached the men's doubles final for the second successive year, having had Frenchman Houdet on the opposite side of the net in the 2012 final.
The Scot, currently world No. 6 in the doubles rankings, will attempt to become just the second Brit to win the ITF Wheelchair Doubles Masters men's title after he and Houdet beat Dutch second seeds and three-time Doubles Masters champions Maikel Scheffers and Ronald Vink 6-2, 6-3. EFDS's Sports Development Officer, Jayant Mistry, was the first British player to claim the title back in 2005.
The top seeds will now face French fourth seeds Michael Jeremiasz and Nicolas Peifer in the final, with Reid aiming to reverse the result of last month's final at the Nottingham Indoor, when Jeremiasz and Peifer edged out Reid and Scheffers in a final set tie-break. Reid said:
"It's so far so good and we've maintained our unbeaten partnership this week with four straight sets wins, so we're confident going into the final and hopefully we can make it four titles from four tournaments tomorrow. Obviously it's going to be tough as Michael and Nicolas are also in great form, but after finishing runner-up after a deciding championship tie-break last year I really want to win this title."
With two Brits in the women's doubles semi-finals, top seeds Whiley and Kamiji beat fourth seeds Lucy Shuker and her Dutch partner Marjolein Buis in a rematch of their Wimbledon semi-final in July. As the Wimbledon runners-up and Australian Open runners-up went head to head, Whiley and Kamiji built a 4-1 first set lead and a 5-2 second set lead en route to securing a 6-2, 6-3 victory. Whiley, who had earlier finished fourth in the women's singles after Buis won the third place play-off 6-3, 6-4, said:
"We're very happy to reach our fourth final in four tournaments with a confident display to back up our semi-final win at Wimbledon. Our loss in the Wimbledon final is the only loss on our record in the four tournaments we have played together, so we want to keep it that way. I've been here before, when I finished runner-up with Lucy in the 2010 Doubles Master final and Yui was runner-up in last year's final, so I would love to become the first British woman to win the title."
While Whiley and Kamiji will face third seeds Sabine Ellerbrock of Germany and Kgothatso Montjane of South Africa in Monday's final, Shuker and Buis will play the all-Dutch second seeded partnership of Jiske Griffioen and Sharon Walraven for third place.
Elsewhere on the penultimate day of play in Mission Viejo, Antony Cotterill and Adam Field finished fourth in the quad doubles when they were unable to repeat their win over Canada's Adrian Dieleman and Italy's Antonio Raffaele in the round-robin phase of the competition earlier in the week. Dieleman and Raffaele won the third place play-off 6-3, 6-1.
Louise Hunt finished one place higher than she did in the women's doubles in 2012 when partnering Japan's Miho Nijo to beat Germany's Katharina Kruger and Chile's Francisca Mardones 6-4, 7-5 in the play-off for fifth place.
Meanwhile, with two Brits in the men's doubles play-off for seventh place, Marc McCarroll finished seventh for the second successive year after partnering American Steve Welch to edge out David Phillipson and Japan's Yoshinobu Fujimoto 5-7, 6-4, 7-5 in a tight encounter.
A total of nine Brits from the Tennis Foundation’s Wheelchair Tennis Performance Programme have contested the NEC Wheelchair Tennis Masters and the ITF Wheelchair Doubles Masters in Mission Viejo from 5 - 11 November.
