Six years after she first picked up a tennis racket, Abbie Breakwell has already taken her profession to exceptional heights – and now she desires extra.
Nottingham ace Breakwell, who’s on the LTA’s Wheelchair Tennis Efficiency Pathway, first sampled the game at an open day on the LTA’s British Open Wheelchair Tennis Championships in her dwelling metropolis in 2016 and has by no means seemed again.
The 19-year-old turned professional in 2019 and has quickly risen up the world rankings to her present place of 33, together with her story an inspiration to these seeking to comply with in her wheel prints.
Abbie has no intention of stopping her rise and her drive and fervour to succeed in the highest is boosted by ongoing help from the LTA, her racket and clothes sponsor Head and RGK, who provide her with the wheelchair she competes in.
“It’s not low-cost to compete in wheelchair tennis and that’s why the backing of the LTA and my sponsors is so necessary,” begins Abbie.
“It prices about £1000-£1500 per match to play and get there, and you should do about 16 tournaments a 12 months, plus then you could have coaching, journey prices and it quantities to a big quantity,” begins Abbie, who was a torch bearer for the upcoming Commonwealth Video games in Birmingham earlier this week.
“Even a sports activities chair is round £8500 for an excellent mannequin, and clearly all these issues add up. So we’re very fortunate that the LTA provides us assist and a number of funding in direction of our profession, but it surely’s nonetheless rather a lot that we’ve got to fund ourselves and typically that may be very tough.
“I believe Nice Britain is unquestionably among the best international locations in how they help their gamers. There are nice occasions just like the British Open throughout the nation that permits us to create a household among the many British participant and all of us help one another.”
Lately, Britain has produced a few of the finest wheelchair tennis gamers on the earth, with the likes of Alfie Hewett, Gordon Reid and Lucy Shuker impressing globally.
Tennis365 sat down for a chat with @AbbieBreakwell at @the_LTA British Open in Nottingham. There may be a lot extra to come back from this rising star of tennis. pic.twitter.com/SbE3RBJXip
— Tennis365 (@tennis365com) July 14, 2022
And Breakwell takes nice inspiration from these she is seeking to emulate, with current Wimbledon runner-up Hewett having a big affect on her as a junior.
“Alfie and Gordon are such good gamers and they’re all the time prepared to go and take pictures and go and hit with youngsters,” she continues.
“Once I was the junior right here and I’d simply began out in my first 12 months of enjoying, Alfie acquired instructed off as a result of he noticed us youngsters enjoying and having enjoyable and jumped on with us.
“He spent an hour and half on court docket with us juniors. It was completely good, simply to spend that point with him, and there’s no segregation between the highest gamers and those that are decrease down. We’re all mates and all of us get on rather well.”
With an unbelievable stage of British success to admire and a powerful platform to work on, it’s straightforward to see why Breakwell is so bold.
Lately wheelchair tennis has moved to all of the Grand Slam occasions – with the US Open set to increase their draw to 16 gamers – and has turn into one of many largest occasions on the Paralympics.
Although the 19-year-old might want to work on her rating to enter the Grand Slam and Paralympic stage, she is just not afraid of the laborious work wanted to do exactly that.
“My dream is to play at Wimbledon and hopefully win at Wimbledon. I wish to compete within the 2024 Paris Paralympics, that’s an enormous purpose for me,” added Abbie.
“I believe it’s very practical. I have to go to round twenty first within the rankings to get computerized qualification. We nonetheless have one other two years to go so it’s a very robust risk.
“Usually in a 12 months you’ll do about 16 tournaments however in a Paralympic 12 months you’ll do about 25-30 since you wish to get as many factors as you’ll be able to to have nearly as good an opportunity as attainable.
“It’s positively a problem that I’m up for. The largest factor between me and the highest ten is that they’ve hit much more tennis balls, they’ve acquired much more expertise and the one technique to get that’s with time and observe.”