Today’s Google Doodle commemorates the 2024 Paralympic Wheelchair Tennis Games in Paris

Did you see what Google Search turned up on Monday and Tuesday? The latest Google Doodle featured two birds — one brown, one blue — playing wheelchair tennis in the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris, France. And those birds were literally very animated. The animated cartoon showed the birds hitting a ball back and forth with rackets and commemorated the wheelchair tennis tournament currently taking place at the 2024 Paris Paralympics.

Wheelchair tennis is one of the fastest growing wheelchair sports in the world. Over the past five decades since it became an official sport, wheelchair tennis and its continued rise in popularity have shown that tennis is not just for birds. Nor is it just for those with certain abilities. It has become an increasingly inclusive sport, accessible to people of all ages, conditions and life situations. The World Health Organization estimates that around 80 million people, or 1% of the world’s population, require a wheelchair to get around.

It was all very inspiring for many people around the world. Ironically, the Google Doodle page included the following caption under the animation: “Ace attitude and great serves. Wheelchair tennis begins today at Stade Roland-Garros!” And you don’t have to be an ace at a tennis quiz to know that Roland Garros Stadium and its famous red clay courts are the annual venue for the French Open. It’s where the wheelchair tennis competitions of the 2024 Summer Paralympics will be held until September 7.

The events are taking place on the same courts that hosted the 2024 French Open last spring, with no real changes to the size of the courts. Players also use the same types of rackets, tennis balls and nets. Players use special wheelchairs that have a pair of larger, curved wheels at the back and two smaller swivel wheels at the front, as well as one of two small “anti-tip” swivel wheels at the back.

The rules of wheelchair tennis are essentially the same as those of traditional tennis, with one exception: the “two-hit rule.” Unlike traditional tennis, where a player must hit the ball back over the net before it bounces twice on their side, in wheelchair tennis a player can allow the ball to bounce up to two times. The extra hit allowed is because it is no small feat to maneuver wheelchairs as skillfully as they do on the court.

The 2024 Paris Paralympics will feature a variety of singles and doubles events for men and women. In addition to the Open events for people with permanent lower limb disabilities, there are Quad events for people who also have upper limb disabilities that limit their ability to maneuver a racket and a wheelchair.

In September 2022, I covered the 2022 US Open Wheelchair Tennis Championships and how the sport essentially got off the ground after a skiing accident in 1976 that left American Brad Parks paralyzed from the hips down. Parks, along with Jeff Minnebraker, worked hard to get the sport off the ground, battling for a while against obstacles like inertia and other things that can stop people from doing innovative things. But ultimately, the sport hit a lot of home runs and grand slams — all four, basically. The sport became an integral part of the Australian Open, the French Open, the Wimbledon Championships, and the US Open. And the International Tennis Federation Wheelchair Tennis Tour blossomed into over 150 events.

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

This year’s edition of the Paralympic wheelchair tennis tournament features a star-studded field. The stars of the men’s Open singles tournament are Alfie Hewett of Great Britain, Martin De La Puente of Spain, Gustavo Fernandez of Argentina and Todiko Oda of Japan. Oda is the successor in Japan to the legendary Shingo Kunieda, who is a fixture in the conversation about who is the GOAT — the greatest of all time — of wheelchair tennis.

Speaking of GOATs, in the Open women’s singles bracket today (September 3), Diede de Groot of the Netherlands stormed into the semifinals, beating Luoyao Gao of China in straight sets. This wasn’t a huge surprise, as de Groot has dominated the sport in recent years. She’s won a Grand Slam — that is, all four Grand Slam titles in one year — not just once, not just twice, but three times from 2021 to 2023. Every time de Groot plays in a major tournament, she can add GOATish to her tally, which is something to watch.

So if you’re looking for a sport that’s not only fun but also inspiring, you might want to give wheelchair tennis a try if you haven’t already. The sport has a lot of the strategy and movement that’s inherent to all forms of tennis. But it also involves athletes who have overcome adversity and are able to skillfully move around in their wheelchairs in ways you may not have seen before.