FIRST it was Henman Hill, then Murray Mound. And now, as Gordon Reid said with a smile yesterday, perhaps it should be re-named Reid's Ridge.
For a few hours yesterday, SW19's prime piece of sporting real estate belonged to the 24-year-old from Helensburgh and his teenage English partner Alfie Hewett as they overcame Stephan Houdet and Nicolas Peifer of France 4-6, 6-1, 7-6 to take the Wimbledon wheelchair doubles title for the first time. The match was broadcast live on BBC2 and projected to thousands on the big screen.
There has been a coming of age for the wheelchair events at this year's Wimbledon and Reid has been at the centre of it. Having been besieged by messages from the likes of David Cameron, Nicola Sturgeon and Rangers manager Mark Warburton, he returns to Court No 1 today to take on Sweden's Stefan Olsson in SW19's inaugural singles competition. With a bit of luck Scotland will have one singles title in the bag before Andy Murray even arrives on court.
"Andy is 'the man' at the moment," said Reid. "He's doing a good job so far, into the final tomorrow. Hopefully we can get two wins under our belt. That would be not bad for a small little country like ours.
"I was on the Centre Court when Andy won in 2013, which was absolutely an amazing achievement for him. But for me, having the opportunity to win it the first?ever time they've had a wheelchair singles event, is a massive, massive opportunity. I'm just happy I've managed to put myself in the position to have a chance at winning it. Hopefully I'll go all the way tomorrow.
"I heard somebody say it was renamed Reid's Ridge now. I don't know if that's going to catch on but it's amazing to have so much coverage of our matches. One of the main things that we can achieve here, being able to play here this week, is to try and gain a lot of new fans and new followers of our sport. When you see how many people were watching our match today, how into it they were, how much they enjoyed it, how many messages we got after, saying how high quality the match was, it is a really good platform to build from, to hopefully go on to bigger and bigger things."
Hewett and Reid will represent Great Britain in this event in Rio and this win, against a French pair who will be one of their main rivals, was a huge morale boost. They rallied from a set down only to be unable to serve for the match twice before eventually getting the better of a nervous last set tie-break.
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