Sonja Peters retires from wheelchair tennis

Photo description: Sonja Peters is preparing to hit a tennis ball from her tennis wheelchair at a tournament.


After she completed her studies in neurophysiology at the Free University of Amsterdam in 2005, Sonja begin seeking a job for her career in that field and has decided to pursue that career full time.

She has had a brilliant wheelchair tennis run. From the Wheelchair ezine newsletter:

"She started playing wheelchair tennis at the age of seventeen. Two years later she played her first international tournaments and then climbed rapidly to the world top. Since 1998 her position on the world-ranking list in the singles has fluctuated between third and sixth place, with a second spot as the highest ranking in 2003. In the doubles category, Sonja and Esther Vergeer was an invincible couple for many years and Sonja even ranked world’s number one for a short while. Sonja won the most important Grand Slams in wheelchair tennis (the British Open and the US Open) and many other tournaments too. The absolute highlight of Sonja’s career came in 2004 at the Paralympics in Athens, where she won a Silver Medal. That year she also ended No. 3 in the world ranking in both the singles and doubles categories. Looking back, that was also the end of her busy life as a tennis player, because from then on she concentrated on completing her studies and building another life for herself."

We all wish Sonja the best in her future career as she works with children who have autism and learning difficulties. Having met her, I know she will bring the same fervor and class to her new career that she always brought to tennis.

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