Australian Open 2026: Lucas de Gouveia & Lucy Foyster win junior doubles titles as Andy Lapthorne finishes runner-up
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Lucas de Gouveia and Lucy Foyster became the latest players on the LTA’s Wheelchair Performance Pathway National Age Group Programmes to win junior wheelchair titles at a Grand Slam, as they and their respective partners claimed the boys’ doubles and girls’ doubles titles at the Australian Open.
15-year-old De Gouveia, who made his Grand Slam debut at the 2025 US Open, partnered Belgium’s Alexander Lantermann to a 6-2, 6-3 victory over fellow Brit Matthew Knoesen and Australia’s Arlo Shawcross to make De Gouveia the fifth Brit to win a Grand Slam junior boys wheelchair doubles title.
Currently world No.3 in the ITF’s junior wheelchair tennis rankings, De Gouveia said: “I really enjoyed myself out there today and I’m proud of that. I found it really fun playing with Alex and that made a lot of difference. When I’m playing good tennis, I’m happy, or to put it the other way, I’m happy when I'm playing good so that was the difference maker.
“I’ve not had the best results in singles but I’ve loved it in Australia and it definitely inspires me to keep working hard to play the other Grand Slams.”
Doubles runner-up Knoesen will play world No.1-ranked junior Lantermann in Saturday’s boys’ singles final, having defeated the Belgian for the first time in his career when they met in the round-robin stage of the competition earlier this week.
Foyster capped a memorable Grand Slam debut when she partnered Japan’s Seira Matsuoka to beat top seeds Luna Gryp of Belgium and Lucy Heald of the USA 6-3, 7-5 in the girls’ doubles final.
12-year-old Foyster, who was partnering Matsuoka for the first time, also took a set off world No.1 junior Gryp for the first time this week in their singles round-robin match-up, while in the first of two lead-in tournaments in Australia earlier month she also beat world No.3 Heald for the first time.
The Norfolk player, who is is part of the LTA’s National Age Group U14 Programme and won the women’s singles title at the Lexus Wheelchair Tennis National Finals at the end of November 2025, said:
“This match was really fun for me. Thank you to the LTA for helping me get here and for helping me these past few weeks. This has been an amazing tournament for me. Just everyone around has been so kind and considerate to us, it's been just amazing and my family have been so helpful and I really appreciate it.”
Foyster began her own wheelchair tennis journey after watching Alfie Hewett play at Wimbledon in 2022, but the 2026 Australian Open has not ended as defending champion Hewett would have hoped.
The 10-time Grand Slam men’s singles champion bowed out 6-4, 6-4 in this year’s semi-finals to world No.3 Martin De La Puente of Spain.
Following the match, Hewett said: “I've only probably played one bad set in this whole trip and before this match, so I felt like consistency and my approach to every game was really high. Today, I’m unsure why, but it just wasn't firing on all cylinders, really. So I don't really have any regrets out there, because I tried my hardest, it just wasn't good enough and sometimes in sport it just isn't good enough.”
Meanwhile, Andy Lapthorne’s bid for a ninth Australian Open quad doubles title came to an end after Lapthorne and Australia’s Heath Davidson lost out to top seeds and reigning French Open, US Open and Wimbledon champions Guy Sasson and Niels Vink 6-3, 6-1 in this year’s final.
