Inclusive Roland Garros: Manon and Melvil, Wheelchair Ball Kids

They collected the balls on the courts of Roland Garros while moving in a wheelchair, just like the players in front of them. Manon Dayan, seventeen, and Melvil Vedrenne-Cloquet, thirteen, both living with rare diseases and wheelchair tennis players themselves, were selected among the roughly three hundred ball kids of the 2026 edition of the Parisian Slam. For the players' safety, they can only operate during wheelchair tennis matches.

They are not the first. In 2025 the tournament had fielded Cléo Ginterdaele and Marceau Le Tallec, the first wheelchair ball kids in the history of Roland Garros and of any Slam tournament. This year, choosing Manon and Melvil gives continuity to an initiative the tournament has placed within a broader inclusion programme, alongside the wheelchair tennis that took the spotlight on Suzanne-Lenglen from 2 to 6 June.

Manon collected the balls for several leading figures of the French circuit, from Frédéric Cattaneo to Guilhem Laget and on to Ksenia Chasteau. Melvil also worked a doubles match featuring Stéphane Houdet, one of the historic names of French wheelchair tennis. For both of them it was a way to experience from the inside a tournament they dream of playing: Melvil has already set foot on the Paris clay, having won the French championships in his category.

Manon's aspiration sums up the meaning of the whole effort well: "I hope that one day I'll be able to come onto these courts to play Roland Garros, it would be truly incredible." A sentence that, more than any press release, captures what it means to make visible on Centre Court a path that until two years ago was kept to the margins.