Australia’s Dylan Alcott has won the French Open men’s quad wheelchair final, defending his title and beating opponent Andy Lapthorne to secure his 11th Grand Slam victory.
“Paris we love you,” he said after his 6-2 6-2- win. “Big love to my team and all of you who tuned in and sent messages of love and support. You all continue to make my dreams possible. Tres bloody bien!”
This win makes Dylan Alcott the first Australian to defend a French Open title since Todd Woodbridge‘s back-to-back doubles wins in 1988-89.
This year’s French Open has been criticised for a lack of COVID-19 safety precautions, with Australia’s Ellen Perez saying that the situation in Paris was very unlike the US Open.
“You could barely call the Paris Bubble a bubble,” she said, saying that players stayed in the same hotels as regular guests and were free to come and go as they pleased.
She said:
“After their tournament finished players were going out, seeing the Eiffel Tower and then coming back to the tournament hotel because there was normal guests, you could break the bubble. It didn’t really matter in the end.”
Rafae Nadal will face Novak Djokovic in the men’s final, while unseeded Polish teen Iga Swiatek beat Sofia Kenin 6-4 6-1 in the women’s final on Saturday.
The win makes her the first Polish player to secure a major singles trophy, and newspapers in her home country have been referring to the Roland-Garros tournament as ‘Poland Garros’.
