Palesa Manaleng8 September 2023 | 16:51

Doubles delight for Montjane & Ramphadi at US Open

South African wheelchair tennis stars Kgothatso Montjane and Donald Ramphadi both went down in their singles matches at the US Open but made great comebacks in their respective doubles matches on Friday.

Doubles delight for Montjane & Ramphadi at US Open

South Africa’s wheelchair tennis star Kgothatso Montjane. Picture: @ITFTennis/Twitter.

JOHANNESBURG - South Africans Kgothatso Montjane and Donald Ramphadi both went down in their singles matches at the US Open but made great comebacks in their respective doubles matches on Friday.

Montjane and her Japanese partner, Yui Kamiji, beat Dana Mathewson and Manami Tanaka, 6-1, 6-4, their victory securing their spot in the doubles final where they are set to face the top-seeded pair of Diede de Groot and Jiske Griffioen.

This comes after the SA wheelchair tennis ace went down to world no.4 Momoko Ohtani, from Japan, 6-2, 6-4 in the women's singles event.

Meanwhile, in the quads event, Donald Ramphadi and his doubles partner, Andy Lapthorne, defeated Tomas Masaryk and Ymanitu Silva, setting up a final clash with top seeds Sam Schroder and Niels Vink.

Earlier, Ramphadi went down to his partner Lapthorne, falling 6-2, 6-0 in the singles.
The US Open is the first of the four majors to feature draw sizes of 16 players for each of the men’s, women’s, and quad singles.

The expanded draw size for the quad division in New York sees new nations added to the list of those countries that have contested wheelchair draws at the majors.