To prepare for the coming tennis season, Miles Groom ’26 spent time in August hitting with a professional who in 2024 had competed against the game’s best around the world and in three of the sport’s exalted Grand Slam tournaments.

All of it, mind you, on wheels. 

Groom’s summer hitting partner, Casey Ratzlaff, is a volunteer assistant coach for the men’s squad. He’s also the top-ranked American male in professional wheelchair tennis. He joined the team in August 2023
after the College hired Justin DeSanto, his personal coach, as the team’s head coach.

Today, Ratzlaff, 26, competes professionally on the International Tennis Federation’s Uniqlo Wheelchair Tennis Tour. Since 2020, he has qualified for the wheelchair draw of nine Grand Slam tournaments, including his first Wimbledon this year. He also has represented the United States at two Paralympic Games, most recently in Paris this summer. 

Although Ratzlaff was disappointed to lose his opening Paralympic singles and doubles matches at Stade Roland Garros, the storied French Open venue, he returned home in early September proud to have competed. “It really was a tremendous atmosphere,” he says. “There were so many people there supporting wheelchair tennis, which was an incredible thing.”

Ratzlaff plays in a lightweight, sports-specific wheelchair with cambered wheels that reduce the chances of flipping over. He and his fellow wheelchair competitors follow the same rules as their able-bodied counterparts, with one exception: In wheelchair play the ball may bounce twice instead of once between hits. Played in the United States since the mid-1970s, wheelchair tennis has been part of the Paralympics since 1988 and all four Grand Slam tournaments since 2007. 

In August, Ratzlaff successfully defended his title at the Uniqlo Wheelchair Tennis Tour’s Austrian Open, but he considers his first victory in a Grand Slam match—a singles triumph against six-time Slam champion Maikel Scheffers at the 2023 U.S. Open—his finest tennis moment so far.

“I think at its core, I love how individualistic the sport is,” he says. “It’s mano a mano. The best player has to come out on top. It’s an extremely difficult sport. It takes a long time, in terms of progression and getting better, and it’s very complex. But it’s very rewarding when it pays off.” 

Ratzlaff was born in Wichita, Kansas, two months after undergoing a successful experimental surgery in his mother’s womb that mitigated complications caused by spina bifida, a birth defect that occurs when the spine and spinal cord do not form properly. As a result of the procedure and subsequent correctional surgeries during childhood, Ratzlaff grew up using crutches.

Ratzlaff’s parents, Tammy and Craig, are former college athletes, so sports were big in the household. “We always included him in any way we could,” says his sister Chelsey, whether that meant carrying him around
the bases in backyard baseball or playing football on their knees in the basement. 

Seeking to emulate his three siblings’ involvement in organized sports, Ratzlaff tried several adaptive alternatives before he discovered wheelchair tennis. At a 2011 Wichita clinic that he attended on crutches with his mom, he met Nick Taylor,
a renowned wheelchair tennis professional who offered him a sports chair and a chance to hit. 

“This was a July day, about 105 degrees,” Tammy recalls. “I was ready to leave, but he wouldn’t come off the court.” 

Taylor, a Wichita native whose career included 11 Grand Slam titles and three Paralympic gold medals in doubles, took notice. “I was beyond blown away with his athletic ability right off the bat,” he remembers. 

With Taylor’s encouragement, Ratzlaff, then 12, began working with Jeff Clark, a local coach, and entered tournaments. He developed quickly and in 2013 was invited to compete with the U.S. Tennis Association’s junior national team in Antalya, Turkey, at the World Team Cup, the flagship international competition in wheelchair tennis. The experience fueled his ambitions. “I was able to see how far you could take it,” Ratzlaff says, “and what you can do in a wheelchair with a tennis ball.” 

Ratzlaff competed for World Team Cup-winning U.S. junior national teams in 2015 and 2016 and has climbed in the professional ranks since graduating from high school in 2017. He began working that year with DeSanto, a Wichita State University assistant coach, and qualified for the U.S. Open in 2020. 

Ratzlaff followed DeSanto to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, when DeSanto was named the men’s tennis coach there in 2021, and subsequently to Dartmouth. In their seven years together, Ratzlaff has risen from No. 40 to No. 14 in world rankings. “Casey is very high level with his technique, but I think what really separates him more is just his drive, his speed on the court, and his competitiveness,” DeSanto  says. 

When he is not traveling, Ratzlaff trains with DeSanto at Boss Tennis Center and puts Groom and his teammates through their paces while offering them his unique perspective. “Despite being in a wheelchair, he’s still able to run me around and give me a good training session,” says Groom. Ratzlaff’s role as a mentor transcends what some might perceive as the limitations of his disability. “What Casey brings is that on-court experience of when you’re in a pressure situation, how do you react?” says DeSanto. “That doesn’t matter if it’s wheelchair or able-bodied [tennis].” Ratzlaff also draws on his experience coaching younger wheelchair players at camps, clinics, and exhibitions.  

Ratzlaff recently bought a house in the area with his sister Chelsey, who in June began a pediatric residency at Dartmouth- Hitchcock Medical Center. “You can tell right off the bat, Dartmouth is such a tight-knit community,” he says. “It’s been great supporting Justin and the team. Our guys are great, and it’s been awesome getting to know them and working with them. I love the scenery and being up in the woods and the mountains. It’s my speed.”               

Mike Cullity writes about sports and other subjects. His centennial history of New Hampshire’s Manchester Country Club was published in 2023.