Donald Ramphadi and Gregory Slade claim silver in Wimbledon quad doubles
14th July 2025
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Wheelchair tennis star Donald Ramphadi says it is a dream come true to have reached the Wimbledon final and walked away with a silver in the quad doubles alongside his British partner Gregory Slade.
This after the pair went 6-0, 6-2 down against Israel’s Guy Sasson and his Dutch partner Niels Vink.
Speaking to SABC Sport, Ramphadi says he is still in disbelief that he and Slade finally got to experience a Wimbledon final for the first time.
"I am happy with the position, I don't think anyone believed that me and Slade were gonna make it to the finals and to see us getting to the finals it's just an unbelievable feeling,” Ramphadi said.
“So, I'm very excited about it. What does it mean for my career? I mean, there's really a great thing to achieve obviously, I'm excited and I was just a runner up in the Roland Gallos and also here, it shows that I'm not far from winning.
“Obviously I wanna add another Grand Slam to my closet, so yeah, that's pretty much what it means to me, it means that I'm not really far from getting another one."
Ramphadi and Slade enjoyed a stellar performance in their semifinals with a 7-6(5), -6, 7-5 win over Turkey’s Ahmet Kaplan and Sam Schroder of the Netherlands.
Ramphadi says it was a memorable performance and believes their turning point was on the third set.
"The semi-finals were interesting, that's the longest doubles that I've played. When I'm trying to remember, I don't remember myself playing for that long in doubles. It was interesting, I mean we started very well and I feel like that something that actually gave us the belief that we can actually do it if we can just keep our head in the game and that's definitely what we did in the first set,” he explained.
“Ending up getting the first set, coming back to the second set. When they came back they had a plan on how they're gonna do it and I mean, we sat back and watched I guess because they just did what they did.
“The plan was to play more slides and to play more balls in the middle but they were able to play with that. The good thing is we came back on the third set and me and Slade had a chat on the changeover that it's either we do it or they do it."
