Did you see what the Google search web page served up yesterday and in the present day? The newest Google Doodle confirmed two birds—one brown and the opposite blue—enjoying tennis in wheelchairs on the Jardin des Tuileries in France. And these birds had been fairly animated, actually. This animated cartoon confirmed the birds hitting the ball backwards and forwards with their rackets and commemorated the wheelchair tennis event 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 isn’t just for the birds. It’s not only for folks with sure capabilities, both. It’s turn out to be an more and more inclusive sport, accessible to folks throughout many various ages, circumstances and life conditions.

All of this has been fairly inspirational to many all over the world. Due to this fact, it’s becoming that the Google Doodle web page dropshot the next caption below the animation: “Ace attitudes and stellar serves. Wheelchair Tennis begins in the present day 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 web site of the French Open. That is the place the wheelchair tennis occasions of the 2024 Summer time Paralympics will proceed by September 7.

The occasions are happening 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 and tennis balls. The web throughout the center of every courtroom does measure 0.914 meters or three ft in peak at its middle. And the gamers are in wheelchairs.

The one vital distinction in guidelines, although, is the “two-bounce rule.” Not like conventional tennis the place a participant should hit the ball again over the web earlier than the ball bounces twice on his or her aspect, in wheelchair tennis a participant can permit the ball to bounce as much as two occasions. 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 courtroom.

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 many who moreover have higher limb impairments that limit their capability to maneuver the racket and wheelchair as nicely.

Again in September 2022, I coated for Forbes the 2022 U.S. Open Wheelchair Tennis Championships and the way the game primarily started after a 1976 snowboarding accident left American Brad Parks paralyzed from the hips down. Parks together with Jeff Minnebraker pushed onerous to get the game rolling, struggle an uphill battle for some time towards obstacles reminiscent of inertia and different issues that may preserve folks from getting modern stuff carried out. Ultimately, although, the game hit a bunch of house runs and grand slams—all 4 of them, in reality. The game has turn out 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 turn out to be a fixture of the Paralympics. France was really the primary European nation to ascertain an official wheelchair program within the Nineteen Eighties. Initially 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 yr’s version of the Paralympics wheelchair tennis occasions contains 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 kind Japan. Oda is the inheritor obvious in Japan to the legendary Shingo Kunieda, a fixture in conversations about who’s the GOAT—best of all time—in wheelchair tennis.

Talking of GOATs, within the ladies’s Open singles draw, in the present day (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 form of dominated the game lately. She’s achieved a Grand Slam—that’s, all 4 Grand Slam titles in a single yr—not simply as soon as, not simply twice, however thrice from 2021 by 2023. Each time de Groot performs in a significant event she will be able to add to her GOATish credentials, one thing that’s value watching.

So, if you’re looking for a sport to look at that’s not solely enjoyable but additionally inspirational, you could wish to give wheelchair tennis a shot should you haven’t already. The game has plenty of the technique and motion that’s inherent in all types of tennis. Nevertheless 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.