In the sweet moment of victory after a marathon three-set, first-round match on Court 17, Gordon Reid rushed over to hug his doubles partner Michael Jeremiasz with emotion strong enough to launch him and his performance wheelchair dramatically up in to the air. Talk about a high five!

With players serving at more than 100mph using just upper-body strength, tennis wheelchairs are finely tuned to be both as light as possible for mobility and as strong as possible for stability and endurance. So they have to be handled with care on their way to and from practice and competition to ensure maximum performance.

On the day of their first match on the grass at Wimbledon this year, No.2 seeds Reid and Jeremiasz arrived at the competitors’ facilities at 8.30am to have breakfast and get ready for their 10am slot on the practice courts. They arrived in day wheelchairs, bringing their tennis wheels as extra baggage.

On a sports wheelchair, the wheels are set on a camber of 30 degrees for stability, which makes them an unwieldy shape. They also have an anti-tip wheel at the rear to prevent a player toppling backwards with the force of serving. The chairs do not have collapsible frames. The wheels can be removed for travel, but, as a piece of equipment, the performance chair is still a bulky item to have to bring along with racket bags and so on.

The match featuring Great Britain’s Reid and Jeremiasz of France started at 11.30am. The tennis wheelchairs belonging to them and their opponents, Joachim Gerard and Alfie Hewett, were taken separately to the court, wheeled on by court attendants and left next to their changeover seats.

As it was blisteringly sunny, the team put a towel over the chair – they might sometimes shade it with a sun umbrella – so that the seat does not become scalding hot. When the players arrive on court, they transfer from day to performance chairs, which means there can be eight chairs on one court at a time.

Performance chairs, which cost approximately £3,000, are built to be robust. Should a mechanical problem arise – most commonly a burst tyre or a wobbly anti-tip wheel – the umpire can call for the on-site wheelchair technician to come and tend to the problem. Reid suffered a puncture at a decisive point of a match last year at Wimbledon, prompting Judy Murray to tweet about the event.

“At the start of the point one of my tyres went and it was really frustrating because we actually stayed in the rally for a really long time,” the British No.1 and world No.3 said at the time. “I just had to stay at the net but it was the worst possible time when you only have one tyre you can only push round in circles.”