'Opened new world' - Paralympian Breakwell on how fate launched career

· Yahoo Sports

Abbie Breakwell was a ball crew member darting around the tennis court at a tournament in Nottingham when a stranger from the stands gave her a life-changing idea.

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It was simply to pick up the racquet herself and play.

Breakwell lives with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease - a muscle-wasting condition that means her legs have become weaker over time - as well as spinal syrinx, which is a ball of fluid on the spinal cord that she did not have diagnosed until she was 13.

It is why she was the only wheelchair user among the ball crew at the 2015 British Open Wheelchair Tennis Championships at the Nottingham Tennis Centre.

So things will have come full circle when the 23-year-old will, as one of Britain's top wheelchair tennis players, roll herself on to the grass court at the very same venue for an exhibition match this weekend.

"This place means so much to me," Breakwell told BBC East Midlands Today while sat outside centre court this week.

"It's where my career very first started. I was out there on one of the courts ball crewing and someone saw I had a disability and asked me if I'd like to have a go at wheelchair tennis."

It was a suggestion that, within a decade of taking up the sport, took her on to the famous clay courts of Roland Garros where she featured for ParalympicsGB at the Paris Games in 2024.

Earlier this season, the British number three from Long Eaton also hit a career-high ranking of 23 in the world.

And while the exhibition match that slots in alongside the finals at the Nottingham Open this weekend is not a competitive showdown, it will be a milestone moment at a venue she regards as her tennis home.

It is one of a number of matches taking place across the British grass-court season to mark 50 years of wheelchair tennis.

Breakwell says the match has given her a rare chance to reflect on all she has achieved in her young career as well as pause to appreciate how the sport has impacted her life.

"It opened the doors up to a whole new world," she said.

"It's a world of people who accept my disability, a world where I've made a lot of friends, a place where I found home with my disability and I realised it was OK to be different, it was OK to not be able to walk the same as everyone else and not to look the same as everybody else.

"The match is an incredible and huge moment because a lot of time as an athlete is spent looking forward to the next goal, the next thing I want to achieve, and sometimes we forget to look back."

Breakwell eyes Wimbledon grass next

Abbie Breakwell teamed up with hugely experienced British number one Lucy Shuker at the Paralympics in Paris [Getty Images]

Breakwell, who also views the match as an "amazing" chance to showcase disability sport during one of major events leading up to Wimbledon, will also be using it to get acquainted with the feel of the grass court after illness - which affected her eyesight - sidelined her last summer.

While it ruined her hopes of trying to play at her home Grand Slam last season, it has not dented her dream of one day getting to compete at SW19.

"I've love to be at Wimbledon," Breakwell said.

"That is the next step now - I've done the Paralympics and Grand Slams are the next ones to tick off."

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