The man who invented a sport and played tennis with Willy Wonka
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- Brad Parks, paralyzed at 18 in a 1976 freestyle skiing accident in Utah, conceived wheelchair tennis while watching family play tennis at a picnic in Indiana and partnered with physiotherapist Jeff Minnebraker to refine the rules and design lighter aluminum sports chairs.
- Wheelchair tennis differs from able-bodied tennis by only one rule — the ball may bounce twice — a standard Parks and Minnebraker settled on for their first event in 1977 in Irvine, California, which Parks won.
- The sport was formalized when Parks helped found the National Foundation of Wheelchair Tennis in 1980, saw its first overseas tournament in France in 1982, and became the first president of the International Wheelchair Tennis Federation (IWTF) in 1988.
- The Paralympics added wheelchair tennis in 1992, and Parks won the inaugural doubles gold with Randy Snow; six years later the IWTF became the first disability sport fully integrated into the International Tennis Federation.
- All four Grand Slams hosted wheelchair events by 2007 — starting with the 2002 Australian Open — and Parks became the first wheelchair athlete inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2010.
- Gene Wilder and Sidney Poitier played doubles with Parks after meeting on adjacent courts at a New York private club while filming a movie; Wilder later admitted he initially dreaded the "charity work," and the pair became longtime friends and regular hitting partners.
- Current stars Alfie Hewett (34 Grand Slam titles) and Gordon Reid (30 Grand Slam titles) both cite Parks as the reason the sport exists, with Hewett saying it gave him "the life it's given me and the purpose that it's given me."
- The equipment gap that launched the industry: Parks saw a disabled man for the first time when Minnebraker sat in his hospital wheelchair, prompting Minnebraker to teach him to build the lighter sports chairs that became standard for the sport.
Why it matters: Parks' decision to merge the IWTF into the ITF in 1998 — rather than retain control as he says happened in other disability sports — made wheelchair tennis the first disability sport fully integrated into a mainstream federation, a governance blueprint the article suggests other disability sports have not followed.
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