I spent my 22nd birthday in rehab. Not the drug one, no, I was in physical rehabilitation at Sydney’s Prince Henry Hospital, after having broken my back in a car accident a month earlier, in June 1990.
I’d just come out of the acute spinal ward and part of my rehabilitation training was to learn how to push a wheelchair up and down hills, around corners and over gutters.
Fortunately, pushing a wheelchair around a tennis court was also one of the activities introduced to newly spinal injured patients.
Playing tennis as a kid, I’d fancied myself as quite the handy player. In fact, I spent many of my summers playing cricket on Saturday morning, only to tear home on my 10-speed racer at midday, demolish a sandwich, swap my cricket whites for a t-shirt and shorts and my bat for a racquet, then pedal like mad back into town for tennis at 1pm.
All this carry on, it later turned out, had a point. It helped me after my accident: having played tennis as an able-bodied junior, greatly assisted my transitioning to wheelchair tennis.
Even so, I quickly discovered wheelchair tennis is an incredibly difficult sport to become competent at, let alone master.
Positioning your wheelchair to allow adequate time to prepare for a shot, then executing it successfully is possibly the hardest thing to learn when you’re a newbie on the wheelchair tennis scene. Pushing your sports chair around the court with the racquet in one hand, and not actually dropping the racquet or jamming a finger or knuckle into your spokes, is not easy. You’ve got to learn to anticipate where your opponent will be, and where he or she will hit their next shot. There’s nothing worse than looking over the net as you hit a backhand down the line, only to see the enemy already in position shaping up for a crosscourt winner.
And you basically do all this without stopping. Your wheelchair is in constant motion while you’re playing a point.
Not long after this particular birthday, I was at some point driven from the hospital for my introduction to wheelchair tennis. I was given a rundown on the brief history of the sport (wheelchair tennis was introduced to Australia in 1981, one year after becoming a recognised sport in the USA when the National Foundation of Wheelchair Tennis was formed), and told about this bloke my own age, who was Australia’s up-and-coming wheelchair tennis star.
He was a double above-knee amputee and apparently he moved around the court in his homebuilt wheelchair like greased lightning. When he was first pointed out to me, he was beside the court mentally preparing for a match with headphones on, head slamming up and down and long hair flying everywhere. Quite obviously a heavy metal fan, I thought.
A minute or so later, he rolled onto the court and started playing. I sat gobsmacked. To see him hitting balls was both awe-inspiring and intimidating. This long-haired, head-banging, heavy-metal fanatic with no legs was ripping heavy topspin forehand and backhand winners down the lines and crosscourt like he’d been raised on a clay court in Madrid. I quickly realised I had a way to go before I would be competitive in my new sport.
This superstar-in-the-making and I became friends quickly over a shared love of any music that originated from Seattle. He put me onto Nirvana before they exploded, and for that I remain eternally grateful. In 1990, wheelchair tennis was a sport yet to hit its first growth spurt, so I got to know the Australian players quite quickly, and soon we were playing each other regularly on Tuesday nights and one day each weekend. Social catch-ups with these Aussie wheelies in between and after matches were a highlight of my week.
But within a year or two, the long-haired member of our group had not only cut his heavy metal hairdo off, but had also started to win tournaments in the USA, the Netherlands, Japan and Belgium, on the burgeoning world wheelchair tennis tour. He’d left our small world of Australian wheelchair tennis behind, and quickly became a nightmare for the world’s established top-ranking players as he climbed the rungs.
The name Dave Hall was starting to become recognised.
Over the next five or so years, I opted in and out of wheelchair tennis. Not because of any dislike of it – it was a terrific arena for me to gain a sense of recovery and capability after my accident – but because a university degree and work were getting in the way. I’d run into Dave every summer at the Australian wheelchair tournaments, and was always glad to find out how he was going on the world tour.
By now, he was a full-time wheelchair tennis professional, living and training in the USA with his coach, and travelling the world 10 months of every year playing tournaments. By late 1995, he was the world number 1 wheelchair tennis player. But amidst all this success, he remained ever the same – down-to-earth and more keen to talk about his new favourite band Marilyn Manson than his latest tournament victory.
It wasn’t until the late 90s, that I began seeing and training more regularly with Dave again. He’d moved back to live and train in Sydney, and around the same time I’d started playing more regularly as I’d finished university and had more spare time.
He’d come a long way in the five years or so since I’d last trained with him, and I soon realised I couldn’t do what he now did. I couldn’t do it even if I gave up my job and dedicated my life to hitting balls. You’d train together for a couple of hours in 35-degree heat, and long after you had nothing left in the tank and thought the session was over, he’d start pushing ‘suicide’ sprints up and down the court to the point he was nearly sick. You’d feel sick just watching him.
I didn’t realise it at the time, but he was doing more than just setting himself up as a champion, he was setting the training and professionalism benchmarks for today’s top-ranked wheelchair players. If there was a gym at a tournament hotel, you’d find him in it. If there was a court available for training and nobody using it, he’d book it and then be out there with his basket of balls practising. If there was lean meat and salad on the menu he’d order it. If the lunches provided at the tournament didn’t meet his high standards, he’d bring his own healthier version.
He ate, breathed and slept tennis and anything to do with improving his game. And in doing so he left behind a legacy of professionalism that other wheelies, having seen what can be achieved, have now adopted.
Looking back, there’s no wonder this guy went on to dominate wheelchair tennis for the best part of two decades, until he retired in 2006. He won everything there was to win. He won 19 Super Series tournaments including multiple US Opens, Australian Opens, British Opens and Japan Opens. He won a Paralympic gold medal in his home city, Sydney, in 2000. He won four World Team Cups as an athlete for Australia.
He also graced the stage no less than six times at the ITF World Champions dinner in Paris, alongside legends like Pete Sampras, Lleyton Hewitt, Roger Federer, Steffi Graf, Martina Hingis and Serena Williams.
If he ever doubted whether all the 14-hour flights, foreign hotel rooms, and time spent away from his family in Sydney over the years was worth it, well this Australia Day he’ll receive some important recognition for all the blood, sweat and tears.
On January 26, as the second week at the Australian Open commences and the tennis starts to get even more serious, my old mate and training buddy, Dave Hall, gets inducted into the Australian Tennis Hall of Fame.
His bronze bust will be unveiled on Rod Laver Arena, at Melbourne Park, and will then sit alongside other greats of Australian tennis like John Newcombe, Tony Roche, Rod Laver, Margaret Court and Evonne Goolagong Cawley in Melbourne Park’s Garden Square.
And apart from his taste in music, he won’t be out of place at all.
Whether it’s aces or races, try out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp for great odds and a great punting experience. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.
Rafael Nadal has hailed the brilliance of Alex de Minaur, calling him "a great player" after the Australian forced the Spanish legend to say…
The clay season promises to be one of high level and tight margins. With the Monte Carlo open just around the corner, it will…
In incredible scenes, defending champion Carlos Alcaraz's quarter-final clash with Alexander Zverev at Indian Wells was halted abruptly due to a "bee invasion." Less…
Marathon man Jordan Thompson has finally clinched his first ATP Tour title, with the Australian upsetting Norwegian Casper Ruud to lift the trophy in…
Alex de Minaur has earned the perfect 25th birthday present, booking a place in the final of the Rotterdam Open with an emphatic revenge…
While watching the recent Australian Tennis Open I became obsessively fixated on the same thought. Why has no one done a television biopic or…
