Brad Parks

Brad Parks medal table
Wheelchair tennis
United States
Paralympics
gold	1992 Barcelona	Double

Bradley "Brad" Parks (born April 2, 1957 in Orange , California ) is an American wheelchair tennis player . He is considered to be the pioneer and founder of wheelchair tennis.

Life

Parks had an accident at the age of 18 in a freestyle skiing competition and suffered paraplegia . In 1976, while in rehabilitation , he began experimenting with wheelchair tennis. Here he met the wheelchair athlete Jeff Minnenbraker , with whom he developed wheelchair tennis.

In 1977 parks and minnenbraker traveled through the USA and made the new sport known at camps and exhibitions. The first wheelchair tennis tournament was held in Los Angeles in May . With the increasing spread of the sport, the first National Foundation of Wheelchair Tennis (NFWT) was founded in 1980 on the initiative of Parks . That same year, the first American championships were held in Irvine , California, which Parks won. A first series of tournaments was also created.

Parks then went on trips to Europe and Asia to spread the sport around the world. In 1988 he became the first president of the newly formed International Wheelchair Tennis Federation (IWTF), and remained so until 1993. In 1998, his tenure as president of the NFWT ended.

At the 1992 Paralympic Games in Barcelona , wheelchair tennis was part of the program for the first time as a regular discipline. Parks won the gold medal in doubles there alongside Randy Snow .

In 2010, Parks was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame .

Web links

• ITF profile Brad Parks (English)
• Brad Parks on the page of the International Tennis Hall of Fame
• How One Man's Idea Spawned Wheelchair Tennis. paralympic.org, June 5, 2012, accessed November 11, 2013 . 
• Wheelchair tennis history. International Tennis Federation, accessed November 11, 2013 .