With Thursday marking 1,000 days to go until the London 2012 Paralympics, four British wheelchair tennis players began their last tournaments of the 2009 NEC Wheelchair Tennis Tour with winning efforts in Canada and the Czech Republic.
In Montreal, Nottinghamshire's British No 2 David Phillipson swept aside Canada's Joel Dembe 6-2, 6-1 to reach the men's singles quarter-finals at the Tennis Canada International, the final ITF 2 Series event of the year.
The 20-year-old world No 24 faces a much stiffer task in the last eight on Friday as he takes on French world No 11 and second seed Frederic Cattaneo.
Later in the day Phillipson paired up with Dutchman Tom Egberink to reach the men's doubles semi-finals after a 6-2, 6-0 victory over Anthony Anderson of the United States and Canada's Eric Gilbert.
In Europe, the second day of the Prague Cup Czech Indoor saw Warwickshire's Jordanne Whiley, Middlesex's Andrew Lapthorne and Surrey's John Parfitt all progress comfortably in their respective women's singles and quad singles events.
British women's No 2 Whiley defeated Spain's Paloma Onate-Coiduras 6-2, 6-3 to move to within one match of her fourth final of the 2009 NEC Tour.
After a first round bye on Wednesday, 17-year-old second seed Whiley, who is on course to finish the year as the world No 1 ranked junior female, faces Spain's Barbara Vidal in the semi-finals.
In the quad singles, top seed Lapthorne opened his Czech Indoor bid in emphatic fashion, beating Frenchman Stephane Erismann 6-0, 6-0, while Parfitt eased past Polish third seed Radoslaw Rudzki 6-2, 6-2. Training partners Lapthorne and Parfitt will now meet in the semi-finals, guaranteeing at least one British finalist at the ITF 3 Series tournament.
After their first round quad singles successes, Lapthorne and Parfitt paired up to win the first of three round-robin matches they will play in the quad doubles.
The British partnership dominated French duo Erismann and Patrick Sappino to earn a comfortable 6-0, 6-3 victory.
Article by Marshall Thomas