Wheelchair tennis coach and former professional wheelchair tennis player Paul Walker is a part of history.
The retired U.S. Army captain played competitively on the wheelchair tennis circuit for eight years, reaching a career-high of No. 4 in the U.S. and No. 31 world-wide.
In 2005, during his professional wheelchair tennis tenure, Walker was part of the very first player field that took to the hard courts of Flushing Meadows to play in the first-ever US Open Wheelchair Competition.
The event, which is part of the international professional wheelchair tour, consists of 20 players across six events: men’s singles and doubles, women’s singles and doubles, and quad singles and doubles.
In honor of the 11th edition of the wheelchair competition kicking off on Thursday, Sept. 6th, USOpen.org caught up with Walker to recount his experience playing at the grandest Slam in the game.
Below, read about Walker’s big time in the Big Apple, his coaching career, which has included coaching US Open wheelchair player Dana Mathewson, and how the US Open Wheelchair Competition has changed since its inception.
USOpen.org: Can you tell us about how you started playing tennis?
Paul Walker: I was a recreational player growing up as a kid. I grew up across the street from a set of tennis courts.
As a kid who was an athlete, it was like, that’s another sport to play, so why not? I played tennis growing up, never had any formal training in the sport because it was not my primary sport, but tennis was always a part of my life since a pretty young age, and I’m thankful for that. I had a good friend in high school who played tennis, and a good friend in college who played on the college tennis team, and through all those phases of my life, somehow tennis was always kind of around.
When I was in the military and first stationed in Germany, there was some tennis available there too, so I played a little tennis over there. So somehow, some way, I always had tennis in my life, just as a fun sport, a sport that I loved and a sport that I followed. Tennis was a sport that I followed a little bit professionally, especially in the ages of great American tennis in the '70s, with [Jimmy] Connors and [John] McEnroe, and some of those great rivalries. McEnroe and Borg, then I followed the evolution of Agassi and Sampras, again, great American tennis players, and I was always following their milestones and everything like that. So I came up in some good years of American tennis.
Then I was injured in 1994 at the age of 30, and it takes a little time you know, to figure out who you’re going to be again in life. I was still young enough, and got invited in 1997 to a wheelchair tennis camp at the USTA, at the Billie Jean King Tennis Center. It wasn’t the USTA Billie Jean King Tennis Center at the time, but it was home to the US Open.
I honestly didn’t even know the sport of wheelchair tennis existed. I had never heard of it before, did not know wheelchair tennis was a sport. I had heard, through my rehab process, about wheelchair basketball a little bit. I had dabbled in wheelchair racing already, that was the first sport that I had tried, and I liked it, but, for me, there was no fun. I think I just realized as I’ve gotten older, that I was always a ball-oriented sports kid. There are straight line sports like running, swimming, cycling... all that kind of stuff where you put your head down and go. Then there’s the creative sports, which involve a ball and some magic.
So when I headed to that tennis camp in Flushing Meadows, I saw arguably the best tennis motivator in the world at the time -- especially in wheelchair tennis, maybe of all time -- Randy Snow, who was leading that camp. So one of our true legends in our sport, among many other great coaches, was at that camp, and I was really kind of amazed at the integration piece of it.
That was the key to hooking me was when I thought, ‘Maybe I can go back and play with my buddy who I played in high school with. I can maybe have this as a lifetime sport to play with my wife, or my kids.’ And tennis translated in that way to me, and so I thought, ‘Yeah, this is the sport that I’m going to pursue now.’
So I began pursuing it as a player, coming up through the USTA ranks, coming up through the C division, B division, A division, and had some fair successes. Then I moved into the Open division in 2000, because I felt like my clock was ticking a little bit, at age 36.
When I started to play in the Open division, I took my lumps for several years, and rightfully so; most players do. But you’re just learning how to compete at that higher level. At a given tournament, you may run into a player who is in the Top 10, or you may actually run into a player that’s No. 1 in the world, and I did that, like our young aspiring players are doing now.
Although I was never really able to compete at that high level, or with those level of players, I knew what it took to compete with them. I just wasn’t capable. I think I had run out of time in regards to the amount of time I was able to devote to myself, or to play myself.
Meanwhile, along that path, I did begin my coaching career. I think pretty early on, I recognized that my playing career was just going to be a stepping stone to a coaching career. I recognized that and was very comfortable with that, and so, I wanted to get to a good enough level as a player, where you could say, ‘Oh I achieved this level,’ and people would go, ‘Oh yea, that’s a pretty good level.’
I was never going to be looked at as a great player or anything like that, and that’s fine. I’m very comfortable with that, but that was a very good, respectable level that then would allow me to have some street credibility in my coaching. And that kind of has worked out very well for me in that regard.
So then I started coaching in 2002, while I was still playing, so it was a bit of a crossover period between 2002 and 2005, when I was kind of starting to do my coaching and then still playing. I stopped playing in 2005; that was the last year I played any tournaments, and I’ve been pretty much dedicated myself to the coaching ranks since then.
USOpen.org: You competed in the first edition of the US Open Wheelchair Competition in 2005. How was that experience?
Paul Walker: Yea, of course it wasn’t common for wheelchair to be in Grand Slams. That was just at the forefront of Grand Slams starting to recognize wheelchair tennis and saying, 'Alright, I think this is something we need to start integrating into our event.' And I think the US Open was the second Grand Slam. I believe Australia was the first, and Wimbledon and the French had not yet come on board, so the USTA and the US Open I think made a great, bold decision to say 'Yes, let’s get wheelchair involved,' so that was a great first step in 2005.
So I was honored to receive a wild card that year to play in that, and I think they wanted to have a fairly strong American presence, even though, maybe as an American player, I’ll use myself as an example, I was not probably expected to do well at that tournament, but they knew that it was important to have some people in that tournament who could articulate what was happening in the world of wheelchair tennis to the media. They knew there was going to be a lot of media that first year, a lot of interviews, a lot of presence with it, with something new added to the US Open. You could sit and have a conversation with somebody, someone who can throw a sentence together and sound coherent, sound reasonable.
So yeah, I was a fairly good player, but it wasn’t because of my playing abilities. But it was a remarkable experience.
It’s obviously -- if I consider myself a player, and I certainly consider myself a coach -- if I consider myself a player, it was certainly the pinnacle of anything I have ever done, playing in this sport, to play at a Grand Slam, and be able to say, ‘Yeah, I played at the US Open.'
It was really a great honor and a remarkable thing.
And nowadays, our top players from around the world have the great fortune of being able to say they have access to any of the Grand Slams. That’s really a remarkable thing, and it just goes to show you in the course of 13 years since 2005, how our sport has continued to evolve, how our sport has continued to be integrated, how our sport has continued to captivate and grow. The level of play, of course, is better now in 2018 than it was in 2005, and that’s not to take anything away from great champions of that era, but our sport has evolved, and it’s a much more dynamic sport on both the men’s and women’s side, quad side, all those divisions.
There’s a higher caliber of play.
USOpen.org: How did you fare in 2005?
Paul Walker: Oh, I didn’t fare well at all.
I played David Hall, who was at the time, still No. 1 in the world. That was the first-round draw, and I was merrily removed from the tournament in as bad a fashion as anybody could ever be removed from any tournament, and that’s okay.
You know, David [Hall] is an International Tennis Hall of Famer, so I don’t think there’s any shame in getting throttled by him. There were some competitive games, but I was never in a league with a guy like David Hall, and that’s okay.
But nonetheless it was a great experience.
USOpen.org: Besides the level of play, how have you seen the US Open wheelchair competition shift or change in the last 13 years?
Paul Walker: The fact that it was new then, I don’t think that the fans or maybe even the US Open organizers knew that they would always hold the US Open wheelchair competition, but now it has become a staple of the sport, and it has really completed the picture of what you see at the US Open. The best of the best players in the world, the Serenas, the Nadals, the Federers, are the draw, that’s what brings in the hundreds of thousands. But what has always been one of the great, complete pictures of the event is the juniors competition, the masters competition, the legends of tennis that still come back every year to play at the Grand Slams and the US Open, in particular.
Now you add a piece like the wheelchair competition, and I think now, the people that regularly attend the US Open, and are tennis fans, I think they look forward to that piece of the US Open. They are now expecting to see wheelchair tennis. Fans will say to each other, ‘Hey, have you ever checked out the wheelchair before? Come on, let’s go check out some wheelchair tennis. It’s really amazing to watch.’
And that level of excitement that that fan base now has been given access to is great, and that they can rely on the fact that they are going to see the best wheelchair players in the world when the US Open comes into town. I think they look forward to that, as a piece of their fandom.
USOpen.org: Do you have a favorite memory from your US Open experience?
Paul Walker: I think it sounds silly, but having access to the car service coming to pick you up at the hotel, and just arranging for the car to transport me and my coach.
I’ll tell you what, one of my favorite memories was being able to bring my coach, Larry Santos, up with me for the US Open. He had been a tennis pro all his life and a tennis fanatic, and walking around the grounds at the US Open, and him seeing all these great players, and seeing how excited he was and to experience that with him... That was almost like a gift for all the time he put in with me as a coach, and to have shared that with him, I think was really exciting.
I referenced the guy I played college tennis with, he’s a good friend of mine and he lives in New Jersey. I was able to have him come over and share that experience with him, as well.
So in essence, that kind of came full circle, for him having been one of the influences in my life in tennis, and again, for us to experience that together, in a completely different capacity than I would have ever envisioned us experiencing in tennis together.
So it was pretty remarkable to share that with those people. So, as much as it’s anything I experienced, I think probably sharing it with those people that was the highlight.
