Lapthorne, who lost in the round-robin stages of the quad singles tournament but won the doubles title alongside Alcott, said that wheelchair athletes felt validated by being heard and allowed to participate. David Wagner, a runner-up in the quad doubles final and the most prominent American wheelchair player, praised the U.S. Open for how it had treated the wheelchair athletes as a full part of the show in on-court productions. But he said the scheduling could still have been changed to prevent the wheelchair tournament from being so heavily overshadowed by the other competitions. “Sometimes in wheelchair tennis, we don’t get quite the spectators that the able-bodieds get, right?” Wagner said. “So here we are playing the doubles final at the same time Azarenka and Osaka are playing.

Source: New York Times September 13, 2020 22:18 UTC