Macclesfield’s Antony Cotterill has finished fourth in his debut at the ITF Wheelchair Doubles Masters, the year-end championship for the world’s top wheelchair tennis doubles players and returned form the USA earlier this week to find he has also moved up one place to a new career best singles ranking of No. 7.
With his 2013 international tournament calendar now completed, Cotterill can now reflect on the best season of his career to date as he prepares for a series of tournaments in Australia in January.
Cotterill and fellow Brit Adam Field went into the Doubles Masters in Mission Viejo, California, as the third ranked partnership and after an early loss to American top seeds and three time Paralympic champions Nick Taylor and David Wagner they kept their hopes of a place in the final alive with a 7-6(4), 6-2 win over Canada’s Adrian Deleman and Italy’s Antonio Raffaele.
However, Cotterill and Field’s third and final pool match ended in a 6-1, 6-3 victory for the USA’s Greg Hasterok and Canada’s Sarah Hunter leaving the British duo with one last contest against Dieleman and Raffaele for third place. But Dieleman and Raffaele managed to reverse the result of their earlier match against Cotterill and Field to claim third place after a 6-3, 6-2 win.
“It was a great tournament and I look forward to going back and doing better next year,” said Cotterill, who, at world No. 5, is Britain’s top ranked quad doubles player. “We’re disappointed not to have finished third after winning the round-robin match, but overall we just lacked a little bit of consistency in the play-off and the small things mount up. However, it’s been a really good season for me and to finish the year with two career best world rankings is very satisfying and put me in a good position going into 2014, which will be a big year as we look ahead to trying to qualify Rio 2016.
“It’s taken a while, but I really feel that with the backing of my Tennis Foundation Performance Programme I’ve got everything in place set up around me and the results are showing that. I’ve been playing in a new tennis chair this year and I’ve started hitting three times a week at Leeds Metropolitan University with some non-disabled players and although I’ve not really changed anything in my training, things are really good. I’m looking forward to a short break and then training through Nationals at the end of this month and on into December in preparation for Australia,” added Cotterill whose last competitive outing of 2013 will be at the National Tennis Centre in London, when he contests the British Wheelchair Tennis Championships from 28 November to 1 December.