Britain’s Alfie Hewett joins career Grand Slam club
Hewett has completed a clean sweep of singles and doubles events at grand slams.
Alfie Hewett joined an exclusive club as his Wimbledon wheelchair singles title completed a career Grand Slam.
Hewett, who had already achieved the feat in doubles, is only the fourth wheelchair player to complete a singles slam and the first Briton in any category since Fred Perry.
Here, the PA news agency looks at the group he is joining.
Elite group
Hewett’s 6-2 6-3 win over Spain’s Martin De La Puente followed last year’s Australian Open title, having also won the US Open four times and the French Open on three occasions.
Shingo Kunieda is the only other player to achieve the feat in men’s wheelchair tennis, with the Netherlands’ Diede de Groot winning a women’s grand slam five times over and Australian Dylan Alcott winning all four majors in the quad category.
Perry was the first of eight able-bodied men to achieve the feat at the 1935 French Championships – the predecessor of the French Open.
The United States’ Don Budge won a calendar year Grand Slam in 1938, as did Australia’s Rod Laver in both 1962 and 1969 – Laver’s compatriot Roy Emerson completed a career slam in 1964.
Andre Agassi and the modern ‘big three’ of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic also won career slams, Djokovic the most recent addition to the list in 2016.
American Maureen Connolly Brinker won a women’s singles Grand Slam in 1953. Compatriot Doris Hart and Shirley Fry Irvin also completed career slams in the 1950s.
Margaret Court completed her set at Wimbledon in 1963, later winning a calendar year slam in 1970.
Billie Jean King, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf, Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova are the other winners of a women’s singles career slam.
Famous four
Hewett’s first title came at the French Open in 2017, adding the US Open the following year. He has won at least one grand slam title every year since – the French Open in 2020 and 2021, the 2022 US Open, the 2023 Australian Open before retaining his US crown, and now his home event.
His achievement follows two years after Kunieda’s emotional Wimbledon win. The Japanese star won the other three majors in 2007 but Wimbledon did not add wheelchair singles categories until 2016.
Kunieda completed the set with his 28th grand slam singles title, with 11 Australian Open wins and eight each in the French and US. He announced his retirement in January 2023, having also won three Olympic titles for a career ‘golden slam’ – a feat otherwise only achieved by Graf, Agassi, Nadal, Williams, Alcott and De Groot.
The latter’s win on Saturday in the women’s wheelchair singles was her 15th successive grand slam singles title and 23rd overall.
Alcott has 15 grand slam quad singles titles and swept the board in 2021, as he had in doubles two years earlier.
Doubles
Hewett is one of seven players with a men’s wheelchair doubles career slam, completed in 2020 before he and Gordon Reid won a calendar year Grand Slam in 2021. Eight women and five quad players have won career doubles slams.
There have been 25 career Grand Slam winners in the men’s able-bodied category, 23 in women’s and 17 in mixed.
Hewett, Kunieda, De Groot and Alcott join Emerson, Court, Hart, Fry, Navratilova and Williams as career slam winners in both singles and doubles – Hart, Court and Navratilova added mixed doubles slams.
