US Open wheelchair tennis: Hewett and Reid rally through tie-break, closing on sixth doubles title

Alfie Hewett stopped his chair on the baseline and turned his head towards Gordon Reid on the left wing. The scoreboard at Flushing Meadows showed 6-3 in the second set, and the deciding tie-break sat at 10-7. I marked that moment with an asterisk in my notebook, not for the final shot, but for the seventeen minutes before it: the two British players did not drop a single service point. The line I wrote for the first set contained one word — "stuck".

Earlier, the same pair had lost the opening set 4-6 to Gustavo Fernandez of Argentina and Tokito Oda of Japan. Those two had beaten them in last year's final. Read 4-6, 6-3, 10-7 on a results page, and it looks like an emotional comeback. Sitting down with the point-by-point record, I see something else: Hewett and Reid won by holding their structure while their opponents changed tempo.

A pair that lives on habit

Hewett and Reid are not a new partnership. They won the US Open men's wheelchair doubles five years in a row, from 2026 to 2026. This is the sixth time they have reached the final together in New York. In wheelchair tennis, where the calendar is dense and the hard courts of New York wear down shoulders and wrists faster than most Grand Slams, keeping a settled doubles pair across several seasons is a rare asset.

Fernandez and Oda are the pair that broke that run. Oda, the world number one and reigning singles champion, is in the best form of his career. Fernandez, the veteran Argentine, brings experience and a sharp read on the ball at the net. In last year's final, these two beat Hewett and Reid. This year's semi-final therefore carried an extra layer: a place in the final, and a chance to rewrite a line in their own record book.

The rest of the day deserved equal attention. In the singles quarter-finals, Reid lost to Oda 6-1, 6-0. There is no excuse in that scoreline. Yet a few hours later, Reid walked onto the doubles court and played as if the defeat had never happened. Technically, wheelchair singles and doubles are two different sports living inside one sport.

Wheelchair tennis at the Grand Slams splits into two main divisions: the open division, for players with spinal cord injuries, and the quad division, for players affected in all four limbs. Each has its own schedule, its own seeding and its own recovery rhythm. When Hewett and Reid walked onto the doubles court, they faced a specific pair, and at the same time an entire ranking system that has shifted considerably since 2026.

Why wheelchair doubles is not singles doubled

In wheelchair tennis, the gap between singles and doubles is far wider than in able-bodied tennis. A chair cannot pivot instantly. To change direction, a player must brake on one wheel, push with the other, and lose at least half a beat. In singles, the player controls the whole geometry of the court. In doubles, that geometry is shared with a second person, and every error is multiplied.

That is why Reid could lose 6-1, 6-0 to Oda in singles and still beat Oda in doubles. In singles, Oda exploited every gap Reid left after each shot. In doubles, Hewett filled that gap. Hewett is not the hardest hitter at the net, but he reads the serve rhythm better than anyone in the draw. He moves a beat early, exactly as the opponent releases the ball.

One technical point is worth recording. In wheelchair tennis, the ball may bounce twice before a player must return it. At this level, both bounces are calculated. Hewett serves cross-court not to win the point outright, but to make the ball bounce a second time in the tightest corner. Reid reads that before the opponent does, and he is already in position before the ball crosses the net.

I noted three repeating patterns across the second set and the tie-break. Hewett served cross-court more often in the back half of the match, forcing Oda to handle the ball with his left wheel. Reid dropped about half a metre deeper than in the first set, creating a buffer for his partner's return. Both held their starting positions through the tie-break instead of switching roles as they had in the opening set. Three small adjustments, added together, produced one set and a 10-7 tie-break.

In Moscow, I learned that legends are not made by victories, but by how they stand still while the world runs. That line was written about football, and it holds here. Hewett and Reid did not move faster than Fernandez and Oda in the tie-break. They simply refused to change posture when their opponents began to change tempo.

The results feed misreads the match

The most common framing of this match is "Hewett and Reid avenge last year's final". I avoid that word. Revenge is an emotional story, and it skips the most important part: the tactical nature of the wheelchair doubles tie-break.

A 10-point tie-break in wheelchair doubles does not reward the hardest hitter. It rewards the pair that makes the fewest rhythm errors. Across seventeen points, Fernandez and Oda were half a beat slow turning their chairs four times when the ball came to the right corner. Hewett and Reid did not need beautiful shots to score. They only needed to be in the right place when the ball bounced a second time.

There is one small detail the results feed skips. Before walking onto the doubles court, Reid was the last man sitting in the waiting area. I once wrote that when the locker room loses the sound of shoes slapping the floor, I hear the pulse of the match most clearly. In wheelchair events, the sound of shoes on the floor barely exists from the start. What remains is the steady roll of wheels, and inside that quiet, you can hear who has prepared more carefully.

A signal from the Australian side

While Hewett and Reid advanced, another player in the quad doubles was eliminated. Andy Lapthorne of Britain, partnered with Leon Els of South Africa, lost to Sam Schroder of the Netherlands and Jin Woodman of Australia 4-6, 6-3, 10-8. This is the second-seeded pair in the quad division, and they won using the same structure Hewett and Reid applied in the men's doubles: hold position, force the opponent to change tempo first.

For Australian readers, the name to watch is Jin Woodman. He is not the most decorated player in the quad division, but he sits among the best movers in a chair. In the tie-break against Lapthorne and Els, Woodman won seven straight service points without changing his starting direction. That is the kind of detail the mainstream coverage skips, and the scouts do not.

In the men's singles, Hewett continued his run with a 6-2, 6-0 win over Casey Ratzlaff of the United States. Hewett is 28 and has won four US Open singles titles, most recently in 2026. Reid exited in the singles quarter-finals after the loss to Oda. One player still alive in singles, the other only in doubles, raises a question about how they will allocate energy across the rest of the tournament.

What to watch in the final

Hewett and Reid will face Martin de la Puente of Spain and Ruben Spaargaren of the Netherlands in the final. They have never met this pair in last year's final, and that is exactly the point. A pair that lives on habit struggles when the opponent is no longer familiar.

I keep the beat through note-taking, because the ball will forget the path it travelled, but the page will not. In my notebook, the line for the men's wheelchair doubles final is still empty. I have not rushed to write "sixth title" into it. The lesson from Reid himself — beaten 6-1, 6-0 in singles and winning in doubles on the same day — is the one I want readers to draw for themselves: do not use the result of one event to predict the result of another.

The first match does not decide a life, but it decides how you listen to every match after it. For Hewett and Reid, the coming final will be the sixth time they hear the same music in New York. The question is not whether they know the tune, but whether they can hear the off note when the opponent changes key.