Did you see what the Google search web page served up Monday and Tuesday? The newest Google Doodle confirmed two birds—one brown and the opposite blue—taking part in tennis in wheelchairs on the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris, France. And these birds have been fairly animated, actually. This animated cartoon confirmed the birds hitting the ball backwards and forwards with their rackets and commemorated the wheelchair tennis match that’s occurring now on the Paris Paralympics 2024.

Wheelchair tennis has been one of many quickest rising wheelchair sports activities on this planet. Over the previous 5 many years because it first grew to become an official sport, wheelchair tennis and its persevering with surge in reputation have proven that tennis is not only for the birds. It’s not only for individuals with sure capabilities, both. It’s grow to be an more and more inclusive sport, accessible to individuals throughout many various ages, circumstances and life conditions. The World Well being Group estimates that round 80 million individuals or 1% of the world’s inhabitants require wheelchairs for mobility.

All of this has been fairly inspirational to many world wide. Due to this fact, it’s becoming that the Google Doodle web page dropshot the next caption beneath the animation: “Ace attitudes and stellar serves. Wheelchair Tennis begins at present at Stade Roland-Garros!” And also you don’t must ace a tennis quiz to know that Roland Garros Stadium and its famed pink clay courts function the annual website of the French Open. That is the place the wheelchair tennis occasions of the 2024 Summer time Paralympics will proceed via September 7.

The occasions are going down on the identical courts because the 2024 French Open did this previous Spring with no actual modifications to the sizes of the courts. Gamers additionally use the identical kinds of rackets, tennis balls and internet. Whereas taking part in, the gamers do use particular wheelchairs which have a pair of bigger cambered wheels within the rear and two smaller castor wheels within the entrance together with one in every of two small “anti-tip” castor wheels in the direction of the rear.

The foundations in wheelchair tennis are basically the identical as conventional tennis with one exception: the “two-bounce rule.” Not like conventional tennis the place a participant should hit the ball again over the online earlier than the ball bounces twice on his or her facet, in wheelchair tennis a participant can permit the ball to bounce as much as two instances. The additional allowable bounce accounts for the truth that it’s no small feat to must maneuver the wheelchairs as adeptly as they do throughout the court docket.

The 2024 Paris Paralympics are courting a spread of various singles and doubles tennis attracts for each women and men. Along with the Open attracts for these with everlasting decrease limb impairments, there are Quad attracts for individuals who moreover have higher limb impairments that limit their potential to maneuver the racket and wheelchair as properly.

Again in September 2022, I lined the 2022 U.S. Open Wheelchair Tennis Championships and the way the game basically started after a 1976 snowboarding accident left American Brad Parks paralyzed from the hips down. Parks together with Jeff Minnebraker pushed exhausting to get the game rolling, battle an uphill battle for some time towards obstacles equivalent to inertia and different issues that may preserve individuals from getting revolutionary stuff carried out. Finally, although, the game hit a bunch of residence runs and grand slams—all 4 of them, in truth. The game has grow to be integral components of the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon Championships and U.S. Open. And the Worldwide Tennis Federation Wheelchair Tennis Tour has blossomed into greater than 150 occasions.

The game has additionally grow to be a fixture of the Paralympics. France was truly the primary European nation to determine an official wheelchair program within the Eighties. Firstly of the next decade in 1992, the game made its Paralympic debut in one other European nation, Spain, particularly in Barcelona. Since then, the Paralympics wheelchair tennis discipline has grown and grown.

This 12 months’s version of the Paralympics wheelchair tennis occasions incorporates a star-studded discipline. Headliners within the males’s Open singles competitors embrace Alfie Hewett from Nice Britain, Martin De La Puente from Spain, Gustavo Fernandez from Argentina and Todiko Oda type Japan. Oda is the inheritor obvious in Japan to the legendary Shingo Kunieda, a fixture in conversations about who’s the GOAT—biggest of all time—in wheelchair tennis.

Talking of GOATs, within the ladies’s Open singles draw, at present (September 3), The Netherlands’ Diede de Groot swept into the semi-finals with a straight set victory over Luoyao Gao from China. That wasn’t super-surprising since de Groot has type of dominated the game lately. She’s achieved a Grand Slam—that’s, all 4 Grand Slam titles in a single 12 months—not simply as soon as, not simply twice, however 3 times from 2021 via 2023. Each time de Groot performs in a significant match she will add to her GOATish credentials, one thing that’s price watching.

So, in case you are looking for a sport to look at that isn’t solely enjoyable but in addition inspirational, you could wish to give wheelchair tennis a shot for those who haven’t already. The game has lots of the technique and motion that’s inherent in all types of tennis. However it additionally entails athletes who’ve moved previous adversity and may transfer round their wheelchairs deftly in methods that you could be not have seen earlier than.