“Of course after having such a traumatic accident you feel sad, you feel angry, you’ve got all these emotions, and there’s a bit of ‘why me?’. But as you kind of move through that, you get out of hospital, you go into rehab, you try to transition into society,” Hall explained. 

“I was learning to walk with prosthetic legs, and then at some point along the way I discovered wheelchair tennis, which was fantastic, because whatever negative energy I had I could kind of pour into hitting tennis balls. And so at some point, all that negativity, and anger, and confusion, and ‘why me?’ just got left in the past. 

“If I was in a level of despair, I had to be willing to try to climb out of it. And I think that’s what that line [in the blurb] means – you have to be willing to find what’s out there. And that means not playing the victim, and it means just bearing your fangs, and maybe the alpha has to come out, a little.”

‘Alpha’ is an apt descriptor for the position Hall attained in wheelchair tennis. From 1995, he was the leading men’s wheelchair player for the best part of a decade, winning nine Australian Opens, eight US Opens and seven British Opens, plus two Masters titles. A six-time ITF World Wheelchair champion, Hall was a member of four winning Australian teams at the World Team Cup and also competed at three Paralympics – the zenith coming when he claimed singles gold at Sydney 2000.

“I just didn’t want to be remembered as the guy that couldn’t win gold, going in as the favourite in his own home town. The pressure was there,” Hall admitted. “But I just had to perform, not even like round to round at my best; I just had to perform when it mattered the most. The break points, in tiebreaks, in the third sets – and that’s all it took. I’ve played better at different tournaments; I didn’t play my best [in Sydney], but I could just turn it on when I needed to turn it on. 

“[These days] if I get recognised, like in an elevator or something, it’ll be for that, for winning that [gold medal] match.”

Hall’s ­final Grand Slam appearance came at the 2005 US Open, the ­first time the tournament was staged at Flushing Meadows and integrated into the able-bodied event. In September 2025, he returned to New York for the first time to celebrate that 20-year anniversary.