When Rick Draney first started playing wheelchair tennis as a quadriplegic, his sister noted that it was a struggle for him to start the sport.
LOA, Wayne County — He had to tape the racket to his hand, she explained, and when he swung the racket to hit the ball, it didn't often go over the net.
The athlete was nominated for the award in November 2022 and after a few months of review, the International Tennis Hall of Fame announced it would induct him and another wheelchair tennis athlete, Esther Vergeer, into the Hall of Fame. "He asked me if I played any sports, and I was still new out of the rehab hospital," Draney said. "He told me about a wheelchair tennis program at another college there in Southern California, and initially I thought, 'Man, I am struggling just getting through the day. How in the world could I even think about playing sports again?'"
"I didn't know what I was doing, and you know, there wasn't really anybody to teach or coach most quads how to get started in tennis. A lot of it was trial and error, and so I got rather frustrated and felt, 'Well, I'm never going to do that again,'" Draney said.
"Now, I had a nice tacky surface around the wrapping … around that handle, the grip of the racket, and that tackiness then translated into better contact and better movement, better mobility, as I pushed with handgrip," Draney said. The athlete went on to win 12 singles and six double titles at the Super Singles level — with five British Open titles and seven U.S. Open titles — spending a total of 289 weeks in the singles top 10 of the Quad Division rankings.
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