For the second year in a row, Thomas Venos and Mitch McIntyre both swept their divisions at the Birmingham National Wheelchair Tennis Championships, each taking home a singles and doubles title.
There was no repeat of 2023’s triple sweep however as they were joined in the winner’s circle by a new champion in the women’s singles, 18-year-old Frédérique Bérubé-Perron, who won her first national title.
The largest competition at the Birmingham Nationals, which were held at the Sobeys Atlantic Tennis Centre in Bedford, NS, was the men’s singles with 13 competitors. Venos cruised to his third consecutive title and fourth overall, not dropping a set in five matches on his way to victory.
Venos did not even lose a game until the semifinals against No. 4 seed Shawn Courchesne, winning both of his group stage matches and then his quarter-final 6-0, 6-0. After beating Courchesne 6-1, 6-1, the British Columbian defeated Barry Henderson 7-5, 6-1 to claim the title.
In the doubles, Venos teamed up with Henderson and the pair cruised to victory, dropping just two games, both in the final against Courchesne and Jean-Paul Mélo. It is the sixth consecutive national doubles title for Venos and fifth in a row for Venos and Henderson as a team.
While Venos completed his third consecutive sweep at the national championships, McIntyre achieved his second in a row, winning both the quad singles and doubles titles.
Across both competitions, McIntyre lost just a single game on his way to the titles. In singles, he won five of six sets in the round-robin event 6-0, with Hisham Mohammad managing to score a single game in the first set of their match. Mohammad then joined forces with McIntyre as the pair beat Steven Dunn and Erduan Solak 6-0, 6-0 to claim the doubles title.
Her victory broke the duopoly of Natalie Lanucha and Anne-Marie Dolinar, who had combined to win every women’s singles title at the Birmingham Nationals since 2018. Dolinar, whose 6-4, 6-2 loss to Bérubé-Perron was the teen’s most competitive match in Bedford, finished as the runner-up courtesy of a thrilling three-set win over the reigning champion Lanucha.
Dolinar and Lanucha teamed up to win the women’s doubles with a 6-0, 6-0 victory over Marilyn Abbs and Vicky Lee Morton. It is the third straight national title for the pair and sixth in a row for Lanucha, who won in 2018, 2019, and 2021 (there was no competition in 2020) with different partners.
Like Venos and McIntyre, Bérubé-Perron claimed two winners’ trophies in Bedford, just not a divisional sweep. She also competed in the three-player junior draw and dominated that too, winning both of her matches in straight sets to win the title.
