Wheelchair Tennis Getting Its Day on Court

The crowd was hushed last weekend at Torrance’s South End Racquet and Health Club when hometown favorites Randy Snow and David Kiley prepared for their last-set tiebreaker against Jim Black and Don Lachman.

The third set in the doubles final was deadlocked, 6-6. The tournament’s top-seeded players were about to square off. The tennis championship was on the line.

As the final game was about to begin, one spectator leaned over to another and whispered, “I’ll bet you don’t notice the wheelchairs now.”

This was the 1991 World Wheelchair Invitational, in which athletes from Australia, Germany, Holland and throughout the United States were vying for $15,000 in prize money.

The event is the top purse in wheelchair tennis. But to the spectators watching the ball fly back and forth on the court, this was, first and foremost, just tennis.

It was the opportunity, as the 38-year-old Kiley put it, for those in wheelchairs to forget terms like “special” or “courageous” and instead just compete as athletes with an extra piece of equipment--the wheelchair.

“I have a difficult time getting people to come here the first time,” said Bob Arsenault, a tournament organizer who is administrator of Casa Colina Peninsula Rehabilitation Center in Lomita. “They think it’s going to be a bunch of cripples and it will be pathetic.

“Once they come here I can’t drag them away,” he said.

Bob Headrick, who watched the action from the front row at center court, acknowledged that he did not expect too much competition when he was invited to last year’s tournament.

“I thought it would be nurses pushing people around a court,” said Headrick, vice president of Fitness Research, a San Pedro company that holds classes in water aerobics. But he was so impressed with the level of play that he became a tournament organizer this year.

The rules of wheelchair tennis are the same as in the traditional game except that the ball can bounce twice before it is hit. While serving, players stash extra balls in the spokes of their special lightweight wheelchairs, which are designed for maximum speed and maneuverability.

Tennis is considered the fastest-growing of all wheelchair sports, but others are on the rise. Sports ‘n Spokes, a national wheelchair athletics magazine, lists 35 different sports groups ranging from the U.S. Quad Rugby Assn. to Paraplegics on Independent Nature Trips to the Handicapped Scuba Assn.

The magazine, published in Phoenix by the Paralyzed Veterans of America, features articles on top basketball, marathon, golf and skiing competitions for wheelchair athletes. Advertisements feature special exercise machines, state-of-the-art wheelchairs and equipment for sky diving, water skiing and hiking.

“For the longest time there was a misconception of wheelchair sports,” said Ron Scalon, a black belt in karate who teaches wheelchair self-defense programs.

“People thought it was kind of slow or not really demanding. People are finding that’s not true.”

The Torrance tournament, organized by Casa Colina, has grown steadily in prize money, sponsorship and level of play from its beginning nine years ago, organizers say. Last year, the event raised $80,000 for Casa Colina’s rehabilitation centers in Torrance, Lomita and Pomona. Another major tennis tournament, the U.S. Open Wheelchair Tennis Championships, opened in Irvine Friday and runs through next week.

Health experts say that wheelchair sports help the athletes--most of whom have suffered spinal-cord injuries--speed up their rehabilitation and avoid sedentary lifestyles.