A 13-year-old has attributed his success on the wheelchair tennis tour to his self-belief.<\/p>\n
Matt Knoesen, from Biddenden, won the boys’ wheelchair singles and doubles at the French Open and has his sights set on the Paralympic Games.<\/p>\n
“Believing in myself is how I’ve been able to win a Grand Slam and travel around the world playing tennis,” the teenager told the BBC.<\/p>\n
“As long as you believe you can be the best and you are willing to work hard to achieve that, then you have the best chance possible.”<\/p>\n
Knoesen was born with a spinal cord injury that left him effectively paralysed below the knee.<\/p>\n
He raced go-karts until an injury stopped him from being able to compete, leading to him taking up tennis. <\/p>\n
“When I realised my dream of go-kart racing was over it was very tricky to deal with but my transition to tennis helped me with that,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Honestly, despite the injuries and challenges I have faced, I have never had a moment when I thought I couldn’t do something. <\/p>\n
“It’s about surrounding yourself with the right people and having the right mentality.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 13-year-old has attributed his success on the wheelchair tennis tour to his self-belief. Matt Knoesen, from Biddenden,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":813834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-813833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=813833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/813834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=813833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=813833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=813833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}