Wheelchair Tennis Star Alfie Hewett Returns to Roland Garros Finals 2021

Alfie Hewett pulled off the latest of the stunning comebacks for which he is renowned on Saturday to maintain his French Open men’s wheelchair singles title defence after defeating world No. 2 Gustavo Fernandez of Argentina 1-6, 7-5, 7-6(6) at Roland Garros. 

Hewett’s victory over Fernandez came at the start of a busy day for players on the LTA’s Wheelchair Performance Pathway, with Andy Lapthorne featuring in the quad singles semi-finals later in the day and then Hewett partnering fellow Brit Gordon Reid for the men’s doubles semi-finals. 

Hewett recovered from 5-1 down in the final set and then fought back from three match points down in the deciding tie-break to repeat his straight sets win over Fernandez in the semi-finals in Paris in October 2020. Hewett, who will now play world No.1 Shingo Kunieda of Japan in Monday’s final, said: 

“I think this was the match of my life. It’s still very raw and the emotion is bottled up, but to play the number two seed, who is in-form and I lost to him quite convincingly last week in our warm-up competition, it’s mentally probably the strongest performance (from me). Right now, that’s the best comeback, the best victory, to show what I’m about as a player and, to be fair, who I am as a person.”  

“It’s very cliched of me to say this but tennis is never over until it’s over and you really have to believe that down to the core.” 

Hewett, who was on the verge of exiting this year’s tournament when he was 6-3 down in the final set tie-break, is bidding for his third French Open title. He won his first career Grand Slam singles title at Roland Garros in 2017, when he recovered from a set and 2-0 down to also beat Fernandez.”