Four Champions: Disability Tennis & Me – Lawn Tennis Association
To coincide with today’s UN International Day for Persons with Disabilities, we’re shining a spotlight on disability tennis, and specifically four of the winners from our recent series of national championships for deaf, wheelchair, learning disability and visually impaired tennis – Esah, Martha, Oliver and Tracy.
Over the past two years, many disabled people have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic with significantly reduced activity levels and opportunities to be a…….
To coincide with today’s UN International Day for Persons with Disabilities, we’re shining a spotlight on disability tennis, and specifically four of the winners from our recent series of national championships for deaf, wheelchair, learning disability and visually impaired tennis – Esah, Martha, Oliver and Tracy.
Over the past two years, many disabled people have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic with significantly reduced activity levels and opportunities to be active, so last month’s series of LTA National Championships were a celebration of disability tennis and provided an opportunity for players to get back to being active and competing.
Here, we speak to the quartet of champions for views on how they got involved in disability tennis and what the sport has done for them. While not everyone can win national titles, anyone can get on court and have fun no matter what their ability or disability – we hope the journeys and experiences described below can help inspire and encourage even more disabled people to return to court and for new players to give tennis a try.
Esah Hayat (Middelsex) – National Deaf Tennis Champion
At the start of November Esah Hayat made it four LTA National Deaf Tennis Championships singles titles in six years with victory at the National Tennis Centre.
The 19-year-old Cambridge University student from East Finchley, who is an established part of the LTA’s GB national deaf tennis squad and a previous World Junior Deaf Tennis Champion, didn’t take an immediate liking to the sport.
“I was first introduced to the game at around six-years-old as my dad and my brother both played. However, I didn’t like it and just wanted to play football. I remember after my first session saying to my Dad ‘this is a stupid game! All you do is run around after a ball and hit it!’ For a while I didn’t play tennis. However, I used to watch my brother Yousuf play and helped collect the balls and hit them against the wall. When I was about nine-and-a-half I realised I couldn’t play football as well as I wanted to with my hearing aid and cochlear implant so I tried tennis again.”
After progressing and playing regularly at the Westway Sport Centre as part of their mainstream programme, his dad received an email from the North London Deaf Children’s Society advertising the National Deaf Tennis Championships, and suggested he enter.
“Deaf tennis has given me the chance to be a part of a worldwide community of tennis players who are all in the same boat. It can be very easy to get used to being the only deaf person in the room in day-to-day …….
