Surfing, snowboarding, speed dating: De Groot feels back at home
Diede de Groot has been called to the courts at Wimbledon more times than she cares to remember but there was something different about today – and something quite special for the perennial champion.
On paper, it looked like any other first-round victory for the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion but her 6-1 6-1 victory over Great Britain’s Lucy Shuker was De Groot’s first win at a Grand Slam for a year.
This follows her time away from the game following hip surgery and a wider sabbatical following the Paris 2024 Paralympic Wheelchair Tennis Event where she lost out to Japan's Yui Kamiji in the gold medal match.
The Wimbledon Wheelchair Championships are the 28-year-old’s sixth event since returning to the wheelchair tennis circuit at the BNP Paribas World Team Cup in May – with results, understandably, mixed.
As such, it is only the Dutchwoman’s second Grand Slam appearance of the season. Her first came at Roland Garros where she succumbed in the first round to Li Xiaohui of China, P.R., who has proven something of a thorn in De Groot’s side.
Li was the player to end De Groot’s incredible 145-match winning streak which stretched from February 2021 to May 2024, while she chalked up another victory at Roland Garros last month. Guess who De Groot faces in the quarter-finals here? Yes, Li.
“Wimbledon will always be my favourite Grand Slam,” De Groot, who was born with unequal leg length and began her wheelchair tennis career at the age of seven, told itftennis.com. “I have loved Wimbledon so much ever since I started playing here in 2017.
“It will always feel like home, even though it’s not my home. It feels like home, though. It’s great to be back here and great to win my first-round match.
“Going into Roland Garros, I knew I could beat a lot of players, but Li was so good. I think I was very unlucky with the draw there and it didn’t give me a good feeling coming back.
“Now I will play her again and I think I will have more rhythm having played some more matches. In fairness, I am just really happy to be through to the next round. I am very happy with my start.”
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De Groot’s time away from wheelchair tennis afforded her a period of introspection and a chance to reinvent herself, look at the bigger picture and consider how she wants the next few years to look.
Part of that process has included a change of coach, with the long-serving Amanda Hopmans replaced by Dennis Sporrel, who has previously worked with Tallon Griekspoor on the ATP Tour but also within KNLTB's [The Royal Dutch Lawn Tennis Association] wheelchair tennis performance coaching set-up.
“I noticed a couple of months before the Paralympic Games that I had lost a lot of my joy, or a lot of my very precise goals,” said De Groot. “I lost oversight, so now I need those small goals again.
“I need to find a way to work on my game and leave the winning or losing – and I am really enjoying that. Previously, I was just going, going, going. There was no break to look back and enjoy.
“If I played really well at Roland Garros, for instance, I didn’t have the time to enjoy it because it’s always then Wimbledon. Then it’s the summer and I need to train, train, train. I felt I just needed to breathe and calm down before I could go again.
“It was a real mental break and I did things like surfing, snowboarding and volunteering – things outside of tennis. It made me realise there is more to life than just tennis. Now I try and find the balance a bit more.
“When I am home, I enjoy it. When I am away for tennis, I am all in.”
The volunteering work which De Groot mentions has also had a profound effect and seemingly enabled the six-time Wimbledon singles champion to become a more rounded and worldly-wise individual.
“I worked in my city and organised projects,” added De Groot. “For example, green solar cycling lights. We worked together with a company to give them free to the people of the Netherlands.
“For a whole day in the winter I was outside. It was very cold but I was handing out solar lights which was really fun and so good. It is good for the environment and I care a lot about that.
“Another project was speed dating and, while people are speed dating, they are doing arts. I liked it, it was interesting and different, and also helped me connect more with people in my city.
“When there, I did not feel like a tennis player because I had to do things which I don’t normally have to like write emails or make telephone calls. I had to learn how to do these sorts of things again.”