Britain’s Alfie Hewett and Gordon Reid have secured their fourth successive Australian Open wheelchair doubles title, defeating Dutch duo Maikel Scheffers and Ruben Spaargaren.Hewett, 25, and Reid, 31, won 6-1 6-2 in one hour and three minutes at Melbourne Park.It is their 16th Grand Slam title together in doubles.World number one Hewett plays 16-year-old Tokito Oda of Japan in the men’s singles final on Saturday.
Hewett and Reid won 10 successive Grand Slam doubles titles between 2019 and 2022.That run came to an end at Wimbledon and, along with defeat at the US Open, they had lost their past two major finals.
“Obviously last year was a challenging year for us. We were still able to reach the four Slam finals but weren’t able to take the ones at Wimbledon and New York,” Hewett told BBC Sport.
“I think that definitely gave us a lot of motivation to start the year on top. We’ve been working hard behind the scenes these last few weeks to re-establish the partnership and keep developing and be pushing towards that A-game,” he added.
In the women’s wheelchair doubles final, Dutch top seeds Diede de Groot and Aniek van Koot won their third successive title in Melbourne, beating second seeds Yui Kamiji, of Japan, and China’s Zhu Zhenzhen 6-3 6-2.Another Dutch partnership, Sam Schroder and Niels Vink, won the quad wheelchair doubles.
Earlier on Friday, Brazilian pair Luisa Stefani and Rafael Matos won the mixed doubles title, defeating Indians Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna.It is a first major success for both Stefani and Matos, who won 7-6 (7-2) 6-2.
A six-time Grand Slam winner in doubles, Mirza, 36, was making her final appearance in a major.She was the first Indian to win a WTA singles title, in 2005 in Hyderabad.In the junior girls’ singles semi-finals, Briton Ranah Stoiber lost 6-3 6-2 to Russian Mirra Andreeva.
(BBC Sports)