Turning rehab into a talent-spotting zone: The world according to ‘Crumpy’

This story is part of the January 13 tennis special edition.See all 12 stories.

The small boy in the wheelchair is no bigger than a prep student. Hairless gashes across the back of his skull suggest brain surgery. An accident, perhaps. He wears a Pokémon jumper and, on an outside exercise court at Melbourne’s The Royal Children’s Hospital, his eyes are fixed on Greg Crump, one of Australia’s leading wheelchair coaches.

If you were at the Australian Open and walked past Crumpy, as he’s widely known, you might not give him a second thought. There’s nothing flashy, nothing loud, about him; he’s a 59-year-old redhead in a cap, sneakers and shorts. But in many ways, Tennis Australia’s national wheelchair development coach is one of the heroes of the Australian scene. A quiet hero. “I hope this isn’t about me,” he says repeatedly when we meet. “I hope it’s about the sport.” Sorry Crumpy, but this is about you.

Every Thursday, Crump makes two hospital visits. One is here, at The Royal Children’s, where he’s been running wheelchair tennis sessions for a decade. And the other is to Royal Talbot Rehabilitation Centre, part of the Austin Hospital, which treats patients with traumatic spinal cord injuries from all over Victoria, Tasmania and southern NSW. He’s been doing that for 36 years.

About 80 per cent of the Austin’s patients are male and they’re often in a wheelchair due to some sky-larking gone wrong: motorbike accident, diving drunk into a pool, an alcohol-fuelled car crash. Crump’s coaching sessions there have a triple benefit: it gives the patients important wheelchair skills; it’s part of their general mental and physical rehabilitation; and it’s allowed him to do something he’s got a rare gift for: to talent-spot. “I’m part of the furniture there,” says Crump. “If someone new turns up, they just say, ‘That’s the tennis coach, he just comes with the place.’ ”

Today, at The Royal Children’s, there are five boys and one girl – all with different issues, one with a tube in his nose, another with a brain injury from a car crash, another with cerebral palsy – and one child who doesn’t want to play but watches from the baseline. The boy with the head scars keeps his eye on the ball as Crump hits it over the mini nets. The balls are low-compression, easier-to-hit red ones that don’t hurt as much if they whack into someone. The young player’s mission is to hit the ball to Paige, the occupational therapist in pineapple-print scrubs. “Make sure you hold your racquet out like a big stop sign,” says Crump to the boy.

It’s the first time he has picked up a racquet. He makes a shot. Then another and another. His face lifts. Then comes a chuckle: there’s something empowering about thumping a ball with pace and precision. “Did you have 25 Weet-Bix for breakfast?” asks Kylie, one of the upbeat allied health assistants. Later, Crump will tell me this boy could have what it takes to make a good wheelchair tennis player. But whatever happens, he’s had some success on this Thursday. And a good experience.

In 1986, Greg Crump – who followed his father into tennis coaching – went to the United States for a course that included a wheelchair tennis component. A light went off in his head and he came back determined to develop wheelchair tennis in Australia, which was being played by only a few players and only informally. He had no friends or family in a wheelchair; he was motivated by something else. “It sounds cheesy,” he says. “But I just wanted to give back to the game.”

Crump with Sonny Rennison, 11, ranked 26 in the world juniors, who says wheelchair tennis “just makes me happy”.

But how to do this? He flicked through Yellow Pages, found some people in disability sports and ended up at the Austin’s rehab centre, setting up a weekly wheelchair tennis session as part of the physio program. In the early stages Crump spent his own money on the sport’s development, including self-funding many trips to coach teams in overseas tournaments. (In 1987, former tennis player Paul McNamee provided the first seed funding.) Now wheelchair tennis is a mainstream part of the Australian Open and its most famous son, the multi-title-winning Dylan Alcott, is a household name and former Australian of the Year.

Eventually, the wheelchair part of Crump’s coaching became so big it was all he did and in 1988 he became Australia’s national wheelchair tennis coach. He led Australia to six World Team Cup titles and has supported the national team at five Paralympic Games, from 1996 to 2012. There’s also a national teams event named after him called the Greg Crump Cup (“I’m a bit embarrassed about that”) and in 2018 the International Tennis Federation bestowed upon him the Brad Parks Award, named after the founding father of wheelchair tennis. “If it wasn’t for Crumpy, there would be no wheelchair tennis in Australia,” says Anthony Bonaccurso, a top-level wheelchair tennis player and alpine skier. “There’d be no Dylan Alcott. There’d be no Australian Open. Wheelchair tennis would still be at the grassroots level.”

It’s a Monday night practice session at the National Tennis Centre. Juniors are tick-tocking balls on the eight indoor courts and Crumpy is on the end court with his two young charges: 11-year-old Sonny Rennison and 13-year-old Gillie Lumby. He sends them off to do laps. First forwards, push, push. Then backwards, push, push. Next, at the baseline, they practise forehands and backhands, their sports chairs – which can cost up to $10,000 for a customised version – pivoting in tight circles. In wheelchair tennis, you’re allowed to hit the ball after two bounces. “Easy breezy,” says Crump, standing in the middle of the court with a trolley of balls. “We’re warming up mate, don’t hit too hard too early.”

Rennison, the world No. 26 in the junior rankings, hits every ball with a toothy grin. “I love playing wheelchair tennis, it just makes me happy. Everyone says I smile on court, even in the worst of times.” Rennison has multiple epiphyseal dysplasia, a bone and cartilage disorder affecting mainly the arms and legs. He was five when he started playing. “When I found Crumpy, all my problems were solved because ever since I was a baby I’ve loved playing sports,” he says. “Anything that had a ball involved, I would go straight for it. So when we found wheelchair tennis, I just loved it.”

Through his visits to the rehabilitation centres, as well as “Come and Try Days” – paralympic talent search days – Crump has talent-spotted many of Australia’s top wheelchair athletes. These include Bonaccurso, paralympians Martyn Dunn, Michael Dobbie and Daniela Di Toro, and Saalim Naser, who reached a career high of being the fifth-best junior in the world in 2022. One of Australia’s greatest wheelchair tennis players, David Hall, started in the sport around the same time as Crump. Crump was the Australian team coach when Hall won gold at the Sydney Paralympics (Hall had his own personal coach, too). “Crumpy has probably discovered most Australian wheelchair players,” says Bonaccurso. “And even if he hasn’t found them, he’s had some kind of contribution to their career to make them the player that they’ve been.”

Crump at training with Jin Woodman.Credit: Eddie Jim.

Bryn Fittall, who works with Crump as an exercise physiologist at Royal Talbot, says his colleague has a great passion for the work, but also a wonderful sense of humour. Crump has an array of trick shots that keep everyone amused, says Fittall, including shooting the tennis ball into the basketball hoop from the other end of the court. “When I did my placement, he didn’t miss one of those shots for four weeks. He got it in every single time … And he always tells our new patients that he’s never tried it before.”

---

I first meet Crump on the top floor of the National Tennis Centre, just over the railway tracks from the MCG (he often sends the juniors on races around the famous ground’s paved concourse). We sit in winged-back black seats he calls the “Dr Evil seats” and he quietly points out the Australian tennis stars passing by: former junior champion Daria Saville, on a comeback, and Storm Hunter, world No. 1 in doubles. Crump gives me a run-down of wheelchair tennis, explaining the two-bounce rule and the major divisions. There’s “open”, in which competitors have a permanent impairment of one or both legs. And “quad” – the Dylan Alcott division – in which competitors have an added impairment of an arm. The prize pool for this year’s Australian Open wheelchair tennis tournament is well over $1 million, he adds. “That is a pretty healthy amount of money.”

Crump is often asked this question: what would you know about wheelchair tennis if you’ve never been in a wheelchair? He’s got a million answers. “How can you be a film critic if you’ve never made a movie? How can you do a restaurant review if you’ve never owned a restaurant? There are football coaches across the road [at the MCG] who have never played at the highest level.

“Coaching is coaching. And teaching is teaching as well. If there is something I don’t know – something about wheelchair mobility, for example – I’ll get someone in who can explain it. Then I’ve learnt something that day.”

He tells the story of a teenager who’d come off his motorbike and was an inpatient at Royal Talbot. One day, he checked himself out to play C-grade doubles in the Australian Open and finished runner-up. “When he got back to the hospital they said, ‘Where have you been?’ And he said: ‘I just won a medal.’ That’s pretty cool.”

Crump’s never had a family of his own; too much time on the road. “For a long time, I travelled 25 weeks a year. Now it’s eight weeks a year. And I’m here three nights a week until 8.30pm.” When I ask what he’s learnt from his time at the hospitals, he struggles to answer. “That I don’t have to grow up! I can still drag out the kid jokes and dad jokes.” On a more serious note: “The biggest medal you can get is if you change someone’s life. That’s a gold medal all day long. The joy can be very fleeting with a medal, but if you make a difference to someone’s life, that’s for a lifetime.”

To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.