\n<\/p>\n
Parks, who had originally given himself a year to see if wheelchair tennis was feasible, is proud but modest about his own role 50 years on.<\/p>\n
“I was the head of the organisation, I was the first player to really play the game but it’s hard for me to say Brad, you invented wheelchair tennis, but you know I was part of it,” he said, pointing to others like Minnebraker.<\/p>\n
Today’s players, though, do not hold back.<\/p>\n
“I think I’m in awe. Absolute awe,” said Britain’s 34-time Grand Slam champion Alfie Hewett.<\/p>\n
“It [wheelchair tennis] is not about accolades and the external things. It’s actually just the life it’s given me and the purpose that it’s given me.”<\/p>\n
And Gordon Reid, who has won 30 Grand Slam titles, added: “It’s an incredible story and that little idea that he had 50 years ago has turned into a huge worldwide sport now. So yeah, [I’m] very thankful that he had that idea back in the day.”<\/p>\n
So much has changed since the early days, not least the chairs which are much lighter and often feature a moulded seat that is more energy efficient for turning.<\/p>\n
And the sport continues to grow – the wheelchair event at Wimbledon, which begins on Tuesday, offers a prize pot of more than \u00a31m, with the winners of the men’s and women’s singles earning \u00a382,000.<\/p>\n
Its profile is also rising and the finals are now played on the 12,345-capacity Court One, compared to the 276-seat Court 17 that hosted the first wheelchair singles final 10 years ago.<\/p>\n
Parks says he is “very happy to see where we’re at”.<\/p>\n
“I’m jealous in a way but in a good way because I would have loved to have been able to play in [tournaments like Wimbledon],” he said.<\/p>\n
But that was never what his dream was about when he set out.<\/p>\n
“I just loved to hit tennis balls, and I wanted to share the feeling of hitting a tennis ball from a wheelchair,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The thing that I feel really, really good about is that I really wanted other people to be tennis players.<\/p>\n
“I used to get disappointed when I thought that everybody was wheelchair basketball players. Tennis was not their main thing. And today I feel like tennis really stands on its own and they’re tennis players. They just happen to be in a wheelchair.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n