It was Super Saturday at the US Open for wheelchair tennis. The day featured nine matches – including all three doubles championships.
The day began with two riveting men's singles semifinals. Stephane Houdet ousted the No. 1 seed, Gustavo Fernandez, in a 2-hour, 16-minute battle, 6-7, 6-4, 6-4. Fernandez took the first set in a tiebeak (7-4) before Houdet rebounded, winning the second set and building a 5-2 lead in the third. The Argentine rallied and came within one game of tying the set, but Houdet who, at 47, is more than twice Fernandez's age, prevailed to make his third US Open singles final.
In the other men's singles semifinal, Alfie Hewett of Great Britain beat his 2016 Paralympic doubles partner, Gordon Reid, in a 3-hour 2-minute marathon, 7-5, 5-7, 7-6. The 19-year-old Hewett nearly ended it in two sets, but he failed to convert three match points at 5-4 and Reid rebounded. The veteran pulled ahead 4-0 in the third set and had two match points leading, 5-3, but he too failed to convert, and the match progressed to a tiebreak.
In the breaker, Reid blew three match points, starting at 6-4. Once Hewett was ahead, 7-6, he lost his first match point of the set and another one at 8-7 before finally ending the suspense, 10-8. All told, the Brits played 277 points (140 for Hewett, 137 for Reid). Afterward, a jubilant Hewett encouraged fans to stick around for a few hours and come to Court 17 where he and Reid would vie for the men's doubles title.
In the women's singles semifinals, No. 2 seed Diede deGroot defeated fellow Dutchwoman Marjolein Buis, 6-4, 6-4, to advance to her first US Open final. In the other semi, No. 1 seed Yui Kamiji of Japan struggled to beat the 2013 US Open champion, Aniek van Koot, but finally converted her third match point of the third set to prevail, 6-4, 2-6, 6-2, and give herself a chance to win her third Grand Slam singles title this year. (Kamiji won the Australian Open and French Open earlier.)
In quad singles, round-robin play concluded with Dylan Alcott beating two-time US Open champion David Wagner 6-7, 7-5, 6-2, and Andrew Lapthorne defeating Bryan Barten 7-5, 6-2. Saturday's results created a three-way tie between Wagner, Alcott, and Lapthorne in the win-loss grid; each had a 2-1 record. Since Wagner and Lapthorne had lost the fewest sets overall, they advance to Sunday's final which will be a rematch of the 2014 final (which Lapthorne won).
Just before 6 p.m., Hewett and Reid rolled onto the court again, this time on the same side of the net, and the Brits won the wheelchair men's doubles title, 7-5, 6-4, over the French team of Houdet and Nicolas Peifer. For Reid, it was a repeat, as he'd won the 2015 title with Houdet and there was no 2016 US Open wheelchair tournament because it overlapped with the Rio Paralympics.
Reid, 25,said, "I felt like we played a really composed match and we deserved to win today."
Hewett added, after thanking the elder Reid, "It's my first US Open and I'm loving every minute of it."
In the quad doubles final, Lapthorne and Wagner beat Alcott and Barten for the title, 7-5, 6-2. Wagner now remains unbeaten in quad doubles finals at the US Open. This is his eighth but it first without longtime partner Nick Taylor.
The night closed with the women's wheelchair doubles final, in which the Dutch duo of Buis and deGroot topped American Dana Mathewson and her partner, the two-time US Open doubles champ, van Koot, 6-4, 6-3.
