Country (sports) Great Britain Height 1.75 m Plays Left-handed Paralympic Games Quarter-Finals Turned pro 2012 | Career record 190–84 (69.3%) Name Gordon Reid Role Tennis Player Handed Left-handed | |
Born 2 October 1991 (age 32)
Alexandria, Scotland, United Kingdom ( 1991-10-02 ) Profiles | ||
Current ranking No. 4 (10 June 2013) Residence Glasgow, United Kingdom Highest ranking No. 4 (10 June 2013) | ||
Gordon "Gio" Reid (born 2 October 1991) is a Scottish professional wheelchair tennis player, ranked World No.6 and is the British No. 1 in singles and ranked World No.4. and is British No.1 in doubles. He has competed for Great Britain at the Summer Paralympics when tennis made its first appearance at Beijing 2008. He reached the quarter-finals in the singles in London 2012 as well as reaching the quarter-finals in the doubles.
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Early life
He was born in Alexandria on 2 October 1991. Gordon comes from a talented tennis family and started playing tennis at the age of six, playing alongside his two brothers and sister and Helensburgh Lawn Tennis Club, where he was a good junior player, before contracting Transverse Myelitis in 2004.
He first began playing Wheelchair Tennis in 2005, when he was introduced to the sport at Scotstoun Leisure Centre in Glasgow. He was acknowledged for his sporting credentials in 2006, when he was among the 10 shortlisted finalists for the BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year.
In 2007, Gordon became Britain’s youngest men's Singles National Champion and he was also part of Great Britain’s winning junior team at the 2007 World Team Cup. He feels his greatest achievement was representing ParalympicsGB at the 2008 Beijing Paralympic Games when he was just 16 years of age.
When he was younger, Gordon combined his training commitments with his studies and in 2009 he passed Highers in Maths, English and Biology after attending Hermitage Academy.
Tennis career
Gordon won his first wheelchair tennis title in April 2005, six weeks after coming out of hospital, when he won the B Division Singles at the Glasgow Wheelchair Tennis Tournament. He became Britain’s youngest National champion at the age of 15 in 2007 and the youngest British men’s No 1 shortly before his 18th birthday at the end of September 2008.
At the 2006 British Open he won both the Men’s Second Draw Singles and Boys’ Junior Singles and ended the year among the 10 shortlisted finalists for the 2006 BBC Young Sports Person of the Year.
In 2007 he won the boys’ doubles at the Junior Masters in Tarbes, France and shortly afterwards won the men’s singles at the 2007 North West Challenge in Preston to collect his first senior international NEC Wheelchair Tennis Tour singles title. He was undefeated as a member of the winning GB Junior team in the Junior event at the 2007 Invacare World Team Cup (Davis and Fed Cups of wheelchair tennis) In 2008 and 2009 he won both the boys’ singles and boys’ doubles at the Junior Masters in Tarbes, France and in January 2009 became world No 1 junior in the boys’ singles rankings, a position he maintained throughout his final season as a junior. Gordon has continued to make fine progress throughout the last two seasons, reaching a current career best men’s singles ranking of No 16 in September 2009 and a career best men’s doubles ranking of No 12 in January 2010. He helped Great Britain to win men’s World Group 2 at the 2008 Invacare World Team Cup, to finish fifth in World Group 1 in 2009 and to finish fourth in Turkey in 2010, which was Britain’s best Invacare World Team Cup result in the men’s event since 2002.
Gordon was named Tennis Scotland Junior Male Player of the Year in 2009 and Tennis Scotland Disabled Player of the Year in 2010. As a doubles player, he qualified for the year-end Doubles Masters for the first time in 2009, where he and his Hungarian partner Laszlo Farkas performed superbly to finish fifth of the eight partnerships. Gordon also played in the men’s wheelchair doubles at Wimbledon in 2008.
Gordon ended 2010 having beaten three world top ranked players on his way to winning three NEC Tour singles titles during the season, as well as winning four doubles titles during the year. He beat Austrian world No 9 Martin Legner to win his last tournament of the season in December, the Prague Cup Czech Indoor.