2009 US Open Wheelchair Competition Returns September 10-13
August 19, 2009
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y., August 18, 2009 – The USTA announced today the field for the 2009 US Open Wheelchair Competition. The event, in its fourth year, will be held September 10-13 at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing, N.Y. The competition will feature 20 of the top wheelchair tennis athletes from around the globe.
The 2009 US Open Wheelchair Competition will once again 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. The top seven ranked players to enter (according to the July 27 ITF Rankings) and one wild card were selected on both the men’s and women’s sides. The top three ranked quad players to enter and one wild card were selected. The total purse for the event will be a record $100,000, an increase of $25,000 over the 2007 competition. The $100,000 is the highest total prize money offered by any of the wheelchair Grand Slam events.
This year’s field will feature the three-time and defending women’s singles champion Esther Vergeer of the Netherlands, two-time men’s singles champion (2005-06) Robin Ammerlaan of the Netherlands, defending men’s singles champion Shingo Kunieda of Japan and defending Quad singles champion Peter Norfolk of Great Britain. To classify as a Quad competitor, a player must have substantial loss of function in one or both lower extremities and one or both upper extremities.
The United States will be represented in singles and doubles by the two-time Paralympic Quad doubles gold medalists David Wagner (Hillsboro, Ore.) and Nick Taylor (Wichita, Kan.), as well as Emmy Kaiser (Ft. Mitchell, Ky.), who will compete in the women’s singles and doubles events.
The 2009 US Open Wheelchair Tennis Competition returns to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center after a one-year hiatus as a result of last year’s Paralympic Games in Beijing, China.
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.