Alcott, Dylan (1990- )

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    ‘He’s Inspired a Nation’: Dylan Alcott Says Goodbye to Tennis

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    Alcott, a recent Australian of the year recipient, ends his career with 15 Grand Slam quad singles titles and a platform for his motivational messages, but a loss in his final match.MELBOURNE, Australia — The lineup at Rod Laver Arena on Thursday at the Australian Open offered a who’s who of the host country’s biggest tennis stars.The doubles pair of Nick Kyrgios and Thanasi Kokkinakis won their semifinal match in the afternoon, setting up an all-Australian final in men’s doubles. The top-ranked Ashleigh Barty won her semifinal in the first match of the evening session, becoming the first Australian woman to reach the singles final at this tournament since 1980.But for Barty, the achievements in those matches paled to those of the man who played just before her in the final match of his career: Dylan Alcott, a quad wheelchair tennis player.“Honestly, Dylan, for me, is at the forefront of that,” Barty said in her on-court interview. “He’s inspired a nation. He’s inspired the whole globe.”Alcott, 31, announced in November that this Australian Open would be his final tournament, drawing a finish line for a dominant career in which he won the quad singles competition at 15 of the 19 Grand Slam tournaments in which he played. Alcott also won Paralympic gold in Tokyo in 2021, making him the first man to achieve the Golden Slam in quad singles, winning all four majors and the Olympics.Fans on Thursday cheered Alcott’s career, which began, he said, with only five people at the first Australian Open match of his career.Quinn Rooney/Getty ImagesAlcott lost, 7-5, 6-0, to second-seeded Sam Schroder in the final on Thursday, to the disappointment of the thousands who had come to watch him — including many in T-shirts sold at the tournament that list his Grand Slam triumphs on the back. Alcott’s athletic ability has paralleled his resonance in Australia, where he has become a cultural presence. On Tuesday, he was named Australian of the year in a ceremony in Canberra, Australia’s capital.Though uncertain of his chances at the ceremony, Alcott traveled between his semifinal and final matches for a chance to receive the award from Scott Morrison, the country’s prime minister.In his acceptance speech in Canberra, Alcott, who was born with lipomeningocele, a dysraphic condition of the spine, showed the wit and directness for which he is known. “I thought I had no chance, and then I got here and I saw this really good-looking ramp, and I thought: I might have a chance here,” Alcott said in his ice-breaking remarks before shifting to darker reflections.Through sports, Alcott found a platform to spread his message. He first won Paralympic gold in basketball in 2008 when he was 17, later switching to tennis. But the attention was far from immediate. “Legit, there was five people there,” Alcott said of his first Australian Open match, in 2014. “Five. My dad, mom, brother, couple of mates, and some people who got lost and accidentally walked past.”When Alcott did interviews and made appearances, his charisma won him further exposure, both as a radio and television personality and as a spokesman for brands like ANZ bank. “The reason I’ve been able to cut through is because of who I am and what I say and what we stand for as a community,” he said. “Luckily I just know how to string two words together. And also I’ve got a get-stuff-done attitude where I just want to get it done.”Alcott expressed frustration that other successful athletes with impairments have had nowhere near his resonance, but he hoped that his could pave a path.“Tennis players have won Grand Slams and gold medals in wheelchairs before, but haven’t had that cut through,” Alcott said. “It’s got nothing really to do about me playing tennis, to be honest. It’s about what I say, I guess who I am, mostly being fully proud of who I am, authentically me and challenging the status quo.”The Australian Open has embraced Alcott, making him prominent in its advertising campaigns. His face smiles opposite Barty’s on a mural near the tournament’s south entrance. Wheelchair tennis, particularly the quad division, has never gotten anything close to the attention that Alcott has attracted. But he expressed optimism that the players who now will be able to win Grand Slam event titles in his absence — including Schroder and his Dutch compatriot Niels Vink — will be able to sustain interest.“They’re ready to go,” Alcott said. “I’m redundant. I’m officially a retired, washed-up proper loser, and I love that.”Schroder said the thousands inside Rod Laver Arena for Alcott’s farewell were “by far the most that have come to watch” one of his matches. “It’s a great atmosphere,” he said. “The Australians are very, of course, very proud of Dylan, and they showed that out on court, which is great. But they’d also cheer when I make points, you know. It was just an amazing energy on court today and in the stands, which really helped me get through it as well.”Alcott said he wished he had taken more chances to appreciate the atmosphere himself, particularly once he knew he was “rinsed” and “cooked” after his exhausting week. “I was really trying to be within myself, but that was unbelievable,” he said. “The crowd was so good, so loud.”“Scarily, I’m used to that now,” Alcott added. “Can you believe that? From a guy that had five people watching him to that being normal. That’s just ridiculous to think. I will never take it for granted, mate.”Sam Schroder of the Netherlands returning a shot in his 7-5, 6-0 victory over Alcott on Thursday.Joel Carrett/EPA, via Shutterstock More

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      Ashleigh Barty and Dylan Alcott's Secret Weapon Is a Former Nike Marketing Exec

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      Some of the most important moments of this year’s Australian Open took place far from a tennis court and had nothing to do with a certain vaccine-averse Serbian champion.Ben Crowe, a mind-set and life coach whose clients include the women’s world No. 1, Ashleigh Barty, who is carrying the hopes of her nation for a championship, and Dylan Alcott, another Australian who is among the greatest wheelchair players, does little work on the court itself.Crowe and Alcott often meet in a cafe for their regular check-ins during the tournament because Alcott loves to be around people. Last week, as Barty prepared for her third-round match, against Camila Giorgi, she and Crowe did their prematch check-in while walking Molly, Crowe’s spanador, a mix of a Labrador retriever and a cocker spaniel, in Melbourne Park.“Ash loves dogs so that makes for a good setting,” Crowe said in a recent interview. “It creates a happy place to converse. And we’ll talk about anything. Dogs or house renovations.”Crowe discussed a match this week with Dylan Alcott, who has advanced to the men’s singles quad wheelchair final at the Australian Open.Tennis players and athletes in nearly every sport have been using sports psychologists and mind-set coaches for years. Never before has mental health been such a primary focus, especially in tennis, which lost one of its biggest stars, Naomi Osaka, for nearly half of 2021 as she dealt with psychological problems connected to the sport and her performance.Crowe took a circuitous route to his role as a guru to some of the biggest names in sports. He worked as a marketing executive at Nike in the 1990s, trying to connect the stories of athletes to the industry behemoth and make piles of cash for both parties.He worked closely with Australian athletes, including Cathy Freeman, an Olympic sprinter, on her campaigns ahead of the Games in Atlanta in 1996 and Sydney in 2000, but also with Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi. He became close with Phil Knight, a founder of Nike, who loves both tennis and Australia.Eventually, Crowe realized it was far more important to athletes for them to truly understand who they were, their back stories and why they did what they did, rather than tying a drummed-up version of their narrative to a global corporation hoping to sell more sneakers and T-shirts.During major competitions like the Australian Open, Crowe usually watches his clients’ matches from the stands, paying close attention to their decisions and body language.“You need to separate the person from the persona, separate the self-worth from the business card,” he said. “I try to get them to answer the questions: Who am I fundamentally? And, What do I want from this crazy thing called life?”Crowe has also worked with the professional surfer Stephanie Gilmore and the Richmond club in Australian rules football.Away from tournaments and matches, he talks with clients weekly for about an hour during occasionally humorous sessions that focus on finding a balance between achievement and fulfillment. There is a simplicity in Crowe’s bedrock principles:Focusing on the future or the past is wasted energy because we can’t control either one.No point in a tennis match is worth more than any other, so why bother treating them any differently.If you have to do something or achieve something to be someone, you will never be content.We don’t know ourselves enough, and the bits we do know we don’t love enough.At a major competition like the Australian Open, Crowe usually watches his clients’ matches from the stands, paying close attention to their decision making and body language, trying to notice if the things they cannot control — the crowd, the weather, the opponent — might be distracting them. He attends their news conferences and chats with them before and after each match.Crowe is also a passionate surfer, and took a break from the tournament to hit the waves at Aireys Inlet, Australia.The deep work, though, occurs in the downtime between tournaments, when he delves with them into questions of identity and purpose.He said Alcott’s career took off and is now coming to a comfortable close because he came to understand he was playing tennis to help people like himself live better, healthier lives. This week, Alcott received a prestigious award, Australian of the year, given annually to leading citizens. He will play his last professional tennis match on Thursday, in the Australian Open wheelchair quad singles final, but his purpose will not change just because he is retiring.Barty, who left the sport for 18 months to pursue cricket, draws inspiration from playing for her country, Indigenous people and the team of coaches and trainers she is always crediting for her success. She will meet Madison Keys in a semifinal match on Thursday, and is trying to become the first Australian woman to win the tournament’s singles championship since 1978.His tennis clients, he said, have learned to accept their weaknesses and vulnerabilities and the endless uncertainty that professional sport and life ultimately bring.“If there is one thing the pandemic has shown it’s that we don’t do uncertainty very well, and uncertainty is vulnerability, and we don’t do vulnerability very well,” Crowe said. “So you either align yourself with the uncertainty or you suffer.” More

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      Diede de Groot and Dylan Alcott Did What Novak Djokovic Could Not

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      The wheelchair tennis stars Diede de Groot and Dylan Alcott each added a fourth major championship to the Paralympic titles they won this year.The tennis Grand Slam is so rare that only five players can claim one, and no player at all has achieved the feat since 1988. The Golden Slam, winning all four majors and a gold medal in the same year, is nearly impossible. Only Steffi Graf had ever done it.Until Sunday, when it was accomplished twice.First came Diede de Groot of the Netherlands, who won the wheelchair competition at the U.S. Open to complete a sweep of the year’s four Grand Slam tournaments to go with her Paralympic gold medal.Later in the day, Dylan Alcott of Australia completed the same feat in the men’s quad event. (As opposed to those in the wheelchair division like de Groot, quad players also have significant loss of function in at least one upper limb.)De Groot defeated Yui Kamiji of Japan, the same woman she defeated in Australia, France and at the Paralympics, 6-3, 6-2. Her Golden Slam almost didn’t get started this year: She needed a third-set tiebreaker to beat Kamiji at the Australian Open.Despite the accomplishment, De Groot, 24, said she felt a little let down by her play: “After such a long time of traveling and just being everywhere in the world, also I think both of us are a little bit tired. I think you could see it in the match, unfortunately.”Sunday’s Open championship was the 12th in a Grand Slam singles event for De Groot, still behind the record of 21 set by her countrywoman Esther Vergeer in the early part of this century.Dylan Alcott celebrating yet another victory on Sunday.Seth Wenig/Associated PressAlcott defeated the 18-year-old Niels Vink of the Netherlands, 7-5, 6-2, to complete his own Golden Slam. It was Alcott’s 15th Grand Slam singles title. Because the quad event is only three years old at the French Open and Wimbledon, it was the first chance for any quad athlete to win a Golden Slam.“Everybody in this room asked me, ‘Are you thinking about the Golden Slam?’” said Alcott, 30. “I’ve said, ‘No, I don’t really care about it,’ all year. Of course I cared about it. It’s nice not to pretend anymore.”In 1988, Graf said after completing her Golden Slam at the Seoul Olympics: “I’m very excited. It’s something not many people after me will achieve.”It took 33 years. And then it only took a few hours. More