Today’s Google Doodle Celebrates Wheelchair Tennis Paralympics 2024 In Paris

Did you see what the Google search page served up Monday and Tuesday? The latest Google Doodle showed two birds—one brown and the other blue—playing tennis in wheelchairs at the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris, France. And these birds were quite animated, literally. This animated cartoon showed the birds hitting the ball back and forth with their rackets and commemorated the wheelchair tennis tournament that’s going on now at the Paris Paralympics 2024.

Wheelchair tennis has been one of the fastest growing wheelchair sports in the world. Over the past five decades since it first became an official sport, wheelchair tennis and its continuing surge in popularity have shown that tennis is not just for the birds. It’s not just for people with certain capabilities, either. It’s become an increasingly inclusive sport, accessible to people across many different ages, conditions and life situations. The World Health Organization estimates that around 80 million people or 1% of the world’s population require wheelchairs for mobility.

All of this has been quite inspirational to many around the world. Therefore, it’s fitting that the Google Doodle page dropshot the following caption under the animation: “Ace attitudes and stellar serves. Wheelchair Tennis starts today at Stade Roland-Garros!” And you don’t have to ace a tennis quiz to know that Roland Garros Stadium and its famed red clay courts serve as the annual site of the French Open. This is where the wheelchair tennis events of the 2024 Summer Paralympics will continue through September 7.

The events are taking place on the same courts as the 2024 French Open did this past Spring with no real modifications to the sizes of the courts. Players also use the same types of rackets, tennis balls and net. While playing, the players do use special wheelchairs that have a pair of larger cambered wheels in the rear and two smaller castor wheels in the front along with one of two small “anti-tip” castor wheels towards the rear.

The rules in wheelchair tennis are essentially the same as traditional tennis with one exception: the “two-bounce rule.” Unlike traditional tennis where a player must hit the ball back over the net before the ball bounces twice on his or her side, in wheelchair tennis a player can allow the ball to bounce up to two times. The extra allowable bounce accounts for the fact that it is no small feat to have to maneuver the wheelchairs as adeptly as they do across the court.

The 2024 Paris Paralympics are courting a range of different singles and doubles tennis draws for both men and women. In addition to the Open draws for those with permanent lower limb impairments, there are Quad draws for those who additionally have upper limb impairments that restrict their ability to maneuver the racket and wheelchair as well.

Back in September 2022, I covered the 2022 U.S. Open Wheelchair Tennis Championships and how the sport essentially began after a 1976 skiing accident left American Brad Parks paralyzed from the hips down. Parks along with Jeff Minnebraker pushed hard to get the sport rolling, fight an uphill battle for a while against obstacles such as inertia and other things that can keep people from getting innovative stuff done. Eventually, though, the sport hit a bunch of home runs and grand slams—all four of them, in fact. The sport has become integral parts of the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon Championships and U.S. Open. And the International Tennis Federation Wheelchair Tennis Tour has blossomed into more than 150 events.

The sport has also become a fixture of the Paralympics. France was actually the first European country to establish an official wheelchair program in the 1980s. At the beginning of the following decade in 1992, the sport made its Paralympic debut in another European country, Spain, specifically in Barcelona. Since then, the Paralympics wheelchair tennis field has grown and grown.

This year’s edition of the Paralympics wheelchair tennis events features a star-studded field. Headliners in the men’s Open singles competition include Alfie Hewett from Great Britain, Martin De La Puente from Spain, Gustavo Fernandez from Argentina and Todiko Oda form Japan. Oda is the heir apparent in Japan to the legendary Shingo Kunieda, a fixture in conversations about who is the GOAT—greatest of all time—in wheelchair tennis.

Speaking of GOATs, in the women’s Open singles draw, today (September 3), The Netherlands’ Diede de Groot swept into the semi-finals with a straight set victory over Luoyao Gao from China. That wasn’t super-surprising since de Groot has kind of dominated the sport in recent years. She’s achieved a Grand Slam—that is, all four Grand Slam titles in one year—not just once, not just twice, but three times from 2021 through 2023. Every time de Groot plays in a major tournament she can add to her GOATish credentials, something that’s worth watching.

So, if you are searching for a sport to watch that is not only fun but also inspirational, you may want to give wheelchair tennis a shot if you haven’t already. The sport has a lot of the strategy and movement that’s inherent in all kinds of tennis. But it also involves athletes who’ve moved past adversity and can move around their wheelchairs deftly in ways that you may not have seen before.