Former Loughborough College student David Phillipson says he is feeling confident today as he faces top seed Stephane Houdet from France in both wheelchair tennis singles and doubles tennis matches for ParalympicsGB in Rio.
David dropped just one game in a 6-0, 6-1 victory over Canada’s Phillippe Bedard to progress to the singles second round and said afterwards: “I’m happy with the way I played and gave him no chance really as he's a good player so I didn't want to let him into the match.
“It's the third time I've had a Canadian in the first round of a Paralympics so I'm used to it now!
“My serve was firing and if I continue to play at that level, I'll be pretty confident in both singles and doubles. Rio has been brilliant so far and they've treated us really well.”
And David, appearing in his third consecutive Summer Paralympic Games, insisted he and partner Marc McCarroll have nothing to fear ahead their second round wheelchair tennis men’s doubles match today at the 2016 Summer Paralympics.
The Great Britain pair face Houdet and partner Nicolas Peifer, the top seeds from France and red-hot favourites for gold, following a 6-4, 7-6 win over Chinese pair Shunjiang Dong and Zujun Wei.
“We played really well as a team and when we bring our game like that we can beat anyone.
“We’ve got the top seeds in the next round but we played some good stuff against them in Australia earlier in the year and had some opportunities.”
Pictured: Former Loughborough College student David Phillipson competes for ParalympicsGB in the men’s singles wheelchair tennis in Rio