Canadian wheelchair tennis player Adrian Dieleman celebrated a career highlight last weekend by winning the Japan Open Doubles competition in Fukuoka, Japan, in the Quad competition. Dieleman from Hamilton, Ontario, paired up with world Nr 1 player David Wagner from the US to narrowly edge out the doubles pairing Noam Gershony (Israel) and his partner Anders Hard from Sweden in the final by the score of 06 76(3) 10-2 (Champions Tie break).
“It was awesome!”, says Dieleman after the match, “ I felt horrible after the 0-6 loss in the fir set. I was extremely nervous and I felt things got worse in the second set. Luckily David and I managed to get back to our original game plan and pulled out the second set and the deciding 3rd set super tiebreaker.” Dieleman gave his partner a lot of credit, ” David was great. He came up big at all the right times and let me play, never giving up faith”
To get to the championship match Dieleman and Wagner had to battle through a tough semi finals by edging out the Japanese team Kawano/Moroishi by 3/6 6/0 10-2 (Champions Tie break).
Winning this Super Series title ( 2nd highest tournament category) should give Dieleman a boost in the rankings in his quest to qualify for the London Paralympics. Dielmeman is currently ranked 11 in the world in doubles and 17 in singles.
