Did you see what Google search turned up yesterday and today? The latest Google Doodle showed two birds, one brown and one blue, playing tennis in wheelchairs in the Jardin des Tuileries in France. And these birds were quite animated, literally. This animated video showed the birds hitting the ball back and forth with their rackets and commemorated the wheelchair tennis tournament that is now taking place at the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris.

Wheelchair tennis is one of the fastest growing wheelchair sports in the world. Over the past five decades since it first became an official sport, wheelchair tennis and its continued popularity have shown that tennis is not just for the birds. It is also not just for people with certain abilities. It has become an increasingly inclusive sport, accessible to people of all ages, conditions and life situations.

It was all very inspiring for many around the world. So it’s fitting that the Google Doodle page dropshotted the following caption beneath the animation: “Ace attitudes and stellar serves. Wheelchair Tennis starts today at Stade Roland-Garros!” And you don’t need to have passed a tennis quiz to know that Roland Garros Stadium and its famous red clay courts are the annual venue for the French Open. This is where the wheelchair tennis events of the 2024 Summer Paralympics will take place until September 7.

The events will take place on the same courts as the 2024 French Open last spring, with no real changes to the size of the courts. Players will also use the same types of rackets and tennis balls. The net in the middle of each court will be 0.914 meters, or three feet, high at its center. And players will be in wheelchairs.

The only significant difference in the rules, however, is the “two-bounce rule.” Unlike traditional tennis, where a player must hit the ball back over the net before it bounces twice on his or her side, a player in wheelchair tennis is allowed to bounce the ball a maximum of two times. The extra bounce allowed is the reason it is no small feat to maneuver the wheelchairs around the court as nimbly as they do.

The Paris 2024 Paralympic Games will feature a range of different singles and doubles tennis tickets for both men and women. In addition to the Open tickets for people with permanent lower limb impairments, there are Quad tickets for people with additional upper limb impairments that limit their ability to maneuver the racket and wheelchair.

In September 2022 I reported on Forbes the 2022 US Open Wheelchair Tennis Championships and how the sport actually began after a skiing accident in 1976 left American Brad Parks paralyzed from the hips down. Parks and Jeff Minnebraker worked hard to get the sport going, fighting an uphill battle for a while against obstacles like inertia and other things that can prevent people from doing innovative things. Eventually, though, the sport hit a number of home runs and grand slams — all four, to be exact. The sport has become an integral part of the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon Championships and US Open. And the International Tennis Federation Wheelchair Tennis Tour has grown to more than 150 events.

The sport has also become an integral part of the Paralympics. France was in fact the first European country to establish an official wheelchair program in the 1980s. At the beginning of the following decade in 1992, the sport made its Paralympic debut in another European country, Spain, in Barcelona. Since then, the Paralympic wheelchair tennis court has continued to grow.

This year’s edition of the Paralympic wheelchair tennis events features a star-studded field. Headlining the men’s Open singles event are Alfie Hewett of Great Britain, Martin De La Puente of Spain, Gustavo Fernandez of Argentina and Todiko Oda of Japan. Oda is the heir apparent in Japan to the legendary Shingo Kunieda, a fixture in discussions about who is the GOAT—the greatest of all time—in wheelchair tennis.

Speaking of GOATs, today (September 3) the Netherlands’ Diede de Groot advanced to the semifinals of the Women’s Open Singles draw with a straight-sets win over China’s Luoyao Gao. That wasn’t really a surprise, as De Groot has dominated the sport in recent years. She has won a Grand Slam, that is, all four Grand Slam titles in a single year, not once, not twice, but three times from 2021-2023. Every time De Groot plays in a major tournament, she has the opportunity to add to her GOAT status, which is something worth keeping an eye on.

So if you’re looking for a sport to watch that’s not only fun but also inspiring, give wheelchair tennis a try if you haven’t already. The sport has much of the strategy and movement inherent in all forms of tennis. But it’s also about athletes who have overcome adversity and are able to maneuver in their wheelchairs with agility that you may not have seen before.