The UNIQLO Interview: Celebrating UNIQLO and ITF 10 Year Anniversary
As 2024 comes to a close, so does a year marking the 10th anniversary of the start of UNIQLO’s wheelchair tennis sponsorship agreement with the ITF – a partnership that continues to see the sport reach ever-greater heights, attract an ever-growing fan base and cultivate new generations of potential future stars.
It was an agreement announced with a star-studded media launch on the outskirts of London during the British grass court season in June 2014 – an event attended by Shingo Kunieda, Kei Nishikori and Novak Djokovic alongside a selection of British wheelchair players.
Within a week the new-look UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Tour began in France, at the BNP Paribas Open de France, with Kunieda among the champions as he added his seventh title of the 2014 season and his 27th consecutive singles victory during a 77-match winning streak that would eventually come to an end at the end of 2015.
“The media launch was an incredible moment,” recalls Kunieda, who became UNIQLO’s first ever Global Brand Ambassador in 2009, before the likes of Nishikori, Djokovic and Roger Federer. “I was honoured to be part of it with Kei and Novak, who have always supported wheelchair tennis.
“The partnership with UNIQLO and ITF was so important because it gave our sport more visibility, more opportunities for players, and more chances to inspire fans around the world” Kunieda continues. “I hoped it would help grow wheelchair tennis in countries where the sport was less developed and create more professional opportunities for players.”
“Yes, it felt a little different at the Open de France. As a player, my priority was winning matches, but as an ambassador for UNIQLO, I also felt a responsibility to represent the sport and the partnership. It gave me a sense of pride, but it also reminded me that my role was bigger than just competing—it was about inspiring others and growing the sport.”
The last decade has indeed seen incredible growth for wheelchair tennis, the sport’s visibility, record prize money and increasing draw sizes, particularly at the Grand Slam tournaments, all contributing to an increasing number of players being able to sustain a living from playing.
View this post on Instagram
“The biggest development I’ve seen is the increasing professionalism of wheelchair tennis,” adds Kunieda, who is now a tournament director on the UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Tour alongside other roles he fulfils since his retirement as a player. “Players now have access to better resources, and tournaments treat wheelchair events with the same respect and standards as other competitions. I’m proud to have been part of this progress. To accelerate this momentum and bring wheelchair tennis to a wider audience—that’s what will surely lead to an increase in the number of participants in the sport.”
By the time that UNIQLO became title sponsor of the UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Tour in June 2014, Kunieda had already won 31 of the record 50 Grand Slam titles with which he would end his playing career. But for another of the sport’s future stars Grand Slam success was still three years away.
Diede de Groot would end 2014 with the second of her Cruyff Foundation Junior Masters singles titles, a series of ITF Futures and her first ITF 3 singles title on the UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis tour, but it was the start of a decade of remarkable success and records for the young Dutchwoman and a decade when wheelchair tennis’s full integration into singles and doubles draws would be completed.
“Ten years ago I was at the start of my career and since then I've seen wheelchair tennis grow so much; not only the game itself but also the tournaments, the prize money, the level of professionalism and the way we can be seen as athletes all of the time,” says De Groot, who has amassed her record haul of 23 Grand Slam women’s singles titles during the last eight seasons.
“We are now completely included in all the Grand Slams. Ten years ago that still wasn't the case. We didn't get to play singles at Wimbledon, for example, until 2016. They might seem like very small changes but for us they make a huge difference.
“I think the growth of the game - especially at the Grand Slams - makes wheelchair tennis better known to other people, so then more people are trying to get involved,” adds De Groot. “ATP and WTA tournaments are trying to get more involved, which is really helpful for us because they lift us. They give us a little boost and that's very helpful to grow wheelchair tennis and hopefully we get to do that for many more years.”
In June 2014 Niels Vink was not yet into his teenage years and still two years from playing his first Junior Series tournament.
“I remember when I played my first junior tournament in Belgium there were a lot of players from different countries and I thought ‘wow, that is amazing’, but no one came to watch,” Vink recalls. “But when I played the Junior Masters and played on Centre Court in Tarbes the stands were full. People were coming to watch us as juniors, but when I started playing as a senior I found that there are fewer standalone tournaments where people come to watch us.
“What I really like about tennis in general is the tournaments where it is all combined, like at the Grand Slams, where we share the same locker rooms, the same courts and the same stadiums as the able-bodied players and people come to watch both them and us.”
Having been inspired to try disability sports and ultimately to take up wheelchair tennis after a visit to the London 2012 Paralympics, Vink hopes that the Paris 2024 Games will not only inspire a new generation of players but also prove a catalyst for more and more fans around the world to engage with and watch the 170 or so tournaments on the UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Tour events in approximately 40 countries.
“At the Paris Paralympics so many people came to watch us – 15,000 people each day in the one stadium and 10,000 in the other,” adds Vink, who this year has become an ambassador for ITF Wheelchair Tennis Partner the Cruyff Foundation. “We’d never experienced that before and we were seen as tennis players and not as wheelchair tennis players. That was very good for the sport, I think.
“I hope the likes of Roland Garros can learn from the Paralympics,” continues the Paris 2024 quad singles gold medallist. “I hope they can put us on the big stadiums more and that one day we can fill the stadiums as well, like we did at the Paralympics.”
“I also hope that more of our bigger wheelchair tournaments, like the Super Series, could be combined with the bigger tournaments for able-bodied players so that we can get the same feeling that I got at the Paris Paralympics, that we are seen as just tennis players and not as wheelchair tennis players.”
Up until the quarter-finals of the Paris 2024 Paralympics, UNIQLO’s roster of Global Brand Ambassadors included the men’s singles gold medallists from four successive Paralympic Games, from Beijing 2008 through to Tokyo 2020, after Rio 2016 gold medallist Gordon Reid became a UNIQLO Ambassador in 2017.
“I’ve had a lot of great opportunities with UNIQLO in the last seven years and probably some of my favourites were the Next Gen Development Programme clinics in London and at the Japan Open with Shingo,” says Reid, who was also one of the British players to attend the UNIQLO and ITF partnership media launch in June 2014.
“It was great to see some of the next generation of a players coming through and it’s exciting for them that the tour will look differently again in another 10 years’ time thanks to UNIQLO,” adds Reid. “For the sport and for the personal experience, it’s also been great to be involved in the Lifewear Days, the exhibition days we’ve done in Tokyo. At one of those we had the chance to hit with Roger (Federer) in front of 10,000 people on the Ariake Stadium. He was one of my heroes growing up, so that was an amazing opportunity as well.
With the last titles on the 2024 UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Tour having been won, 2024 has neared its end with a High Performance Junior Wheelchair Tennis Camp in Orlando, which is the latest event in UNIQLO’s Next Generation Development Programme, supported by the Fast-Retailing Foundation and with camp participants inspired by both Kunieda and Kei Nishikori.
“Some of the spectacles and the scenes we see now in videos and pictures from the Grand Slams are night and day from the courts and the atmospheres that we were playing in when I first started. That's super exciting,” Reid continues. “More of the ATP and WTA tournaments are integrating with wheelchair tennis events now and that's really exciting for the future. Hopefully we can have more of that to showcase the sport on the biggest stages in tennis. But then, on the other side, I think we need to try and keep improving the standalone wheelchair events for the audience experience and get more people along to support those events.”
As Reid says, changes and improvements that have been made over the last 10 years and that continue to be made now are shaping the future of wheelchair tennis as it will be in 10 years’ time for new generations of players and fans.
Thank you UNIQLO for your incredible support and passion for wheelchair tennis and here’s to the future!
View this post on Instagram