The Other Arab Tennis Star

Mayar Sherif, a graduate of Pepperdine University, playing at the 2022 U.S. Open. Sherif is the second Arab woman — and first Egyptian one — to crack the Top 50.

It was coming on June and Mayar Sherif, the second Arab tennis player in history to break the top 50, needed some results — and a little bit of luck. The year had not started well for her, and her ranking had dropped from WTA No. 31 — on the back of a history-making 2023 season in which she became the highest-ranked Egyptian tennis player ever, male or female, to pick up a racquet — to WTA No. 63. If she wanted to achieve an individual and national dream by earning an Olympic medal in Paris, she had to dig deep.

Sherif clawed into her soul for grit and gravitas, and reached four finals in the seven weeks before the Olympics, winning 20 out of 27 matches. She not only locked down her spot in Paris, but proved to the world that the 26-year-old deserves her spot at the top of the Arab tennis elite — and at this week’s US Open.

“Oh my gosh, so many said I wouldn't make it, 90 per cent of the people said I couldn't make it,” Sherif told Sky Sports in May 2023. (She was unavailable for comment during the time of this writing.) “The only person or two people were my parents, maybe one of my sisters, who always believed I was good, but that was literally it.

“If I hadn't found my coach I have now, who helped me financially and believed in me more than I believed in myself, I might not have made it; that gave me a huge push mentally to believe I could get to where I am now.”

Mayer Sherif unlocked a new milestone in her career in 2024 by winning the Open Internacional de Valencia, a WTA 125 event, in June. A month later, she traded up from K-Swiss to slick new Adidas tennis kit.

With Ons Jabeur out at the last minute due to an ongoing shoulder injury, the Middle East/North Africa region is looking to Sherif to deliver on their dreams of going deep into the Open draw. She may be up to the task, but on the second day of the New York Slam, Sherif faces Karolina Plíšková, the former Czech standout and WTA No. 1, as well as Wimbledon and U.S. Open finalist. So far, Plíšková — coming off an injury hiatus in 2022 — has defeated Naomi Osaka twice, won a title in Romania and returned to the Top 40 at age 32. Theirs is a night match on the outer courts, a place to which Sherif may be accustomed, but not Plíšková. Several other Arab players, including from the growing contingent in Turkey and Algeria, went through qualifying, but didn’t make it to the big dance.

Day one at the Open went relatively as expected, with the hard court specialists from Latin America and the United States, including Tomás Martín Etcheverry of Argentina, Taylor Fritz, Ben Shelton, Emma Navarro, Madison Keys and Taylor Townsend coming through their first rounds without much fuss. One big upset came on Court 18 with the shocking defeat of Holger Rune by journeyman player Brandon Nakishima in three short sets. Others struggled, including Diego Schwartzman, Dominic Theim and Yoshihito Nishioka, who collapsed on court after severe cramping.

The opponent of Yoshihito Nishioka, Miomir Kecmanović of Serbia, sits and waits by the Japanese tennis star as he receives help after collapsing from severe cramps in their fifth set of their match. Nishioka has forfeited the doubles and decided to return home to Japan.

Things look as if they will heat up today, both in competition and weather, with Danielle Collins, who has finally reached the WTA Top 10 in her retirement, taking on fellow American Caroline Dolehide; Naomi Osaka up against the outspoken and outlandish Latvian, Jelena Ostapenko; Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas playing Greek Australian, Thanasi Kokkinatis; and former U.S. Open champion Emma Raducanu (2021) doing battle with former Australian Open champion Sofia Kennan (2020) in the 30-degree (86 degrees Fahrenheit) heat with 90 percent humidity. Everyone was sweating and cramping and drinking and toweling off at the end of the New York summer on Monday; expect more today, whether from anxiety, stress or just the air bearing down on them. Pressure is a privilege, said the great Billie Jean King, but NYC smog is not.

Although in 2020 Sherif was still outside the Top-100 on the respective tours — a previous cutoff designation — the Tokyo Olympics gave her an opportunity to level-up, as it has done for other players from “outlier” countries, such as Monica Puig from Puerto Rico, who earned gold at Rio 2016 and Nicolás Massú from Chile, who took hold a gold medal in Athens 2004. No tennis player has ever represented Egypt in modern Olympic history, but in Tokyo both Sherif and her Egyptian colleague, Mohamed Safwat — then, the No. 1 player in Egypt — earned the top spots and their Olympic tickets through regional tournaments, including the African games.

As a young player, Sherif, whose older sister Rana Sherif Ahmed was an Egyptian standout and Federation Cup player, never dreamed of such results. She stayed mostly out of the junior international competition required to turn professional because her family simply lacked the money. When Fresno State in California came knocking with a scholarship, Sherif instantly said “yes” and then transferred to spend her last two years with a more highly regarded team: Pepperdine University, whose ranking sits squarely at No. 1 in the California division. In Malibu, Sherif earned All-American status in both 2017 and 2018 and made the semifinals of the 2018 NCAA singles tournament, ending her senior season ranked No. 11 in singles, yet she did not consider turning pro until halfway through college, partly inspired by Tunisian Ons Jabeur’s ascendancy.

Egyptian Mayar Sherif at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, where she grew into an international tennis player, developed her game and ultimately, decided to go pro, inspired by Tunisian, Ons Jabeur.

“I wanted to go to practice, compete and be a good example for my teammates, which helped me have the maturity and discipline necessary to compete on tour,” Sherif has said. When she did find herself on the ITF World Tennis Tour —the developmental series for the WTA — Sherif said life as a player was physically, mentally and financially draining. “It’s tough out there,” Sherif told the Pepperdine University Graphic. “I think the tour is a bit not fair because when you come in with no points and no ranking, you have to spend a lot of money investing in yourself.

“You don’t really make money until the top 200, and you don’t get good money until the top 100,” Sherif said. “But to get to the top 200, you have to spend on accommodation, flight tickets, hotels, food, the salary of your coach, the salary of your fitness coach, the salary of your physio. Because I live in Spain instead of my home country, I have to rent an apartment, I have to buy a car. All of this is very expensive.”

Mayar Sherif looking for trophies, titles and tenacity to uplift the sport in Egypt in her new Adidas kit.

But for many years, even the ITF World Tour seemed out of reach. Idolising Kim Clijsters and Amelie Mauresmo in her living room in Cairo, while the two took home tennis title after tennis tile, she believed her destiny would always be nothing more than admirer. “It's never easy (being a female athlete in the Arab world),” Sherif told Sky Sports. '“Talking in my country, what’s expected from you as a woman is that if you go to college ‘good for you’ but after that you’re getting married, raising kids and you stay with your kids at home and cook for your husband.

“It was very hard, even for the people around me like some of my friends and family, to understand me when I said ‘I want this really bad, I want to get out and explore and see what I can do out there, even if I’m going to be by myself.”

Indeed, from 2017 to 2024 — or, from Rio to Paris — Sherif has risen quickly from the 700s, where she started. She also overcame a loss in the first round of Australian Open qualifiers in 2019 to a first-round Australian Open main draw win two years later. Along the way, she became the first Egyptian to reach the main draw of all of the majors, with wins over the now-retired Camila Giorgi, Caroline Garcia and Elise Mertens, and has partnered with rising star Jasmine Paolini to make it to the doubles semifinals of the 2023 WTA 1000 Guadalajara Open.

So what’s next? A U.S. Open trophy, which no Arab player has previously won, although her good friend Ons Jabeur nearly grasped the cup in 2022, before losing to WTA No. 1 Iga Świątek. But also, like Jabeur, Sherif wants to expand the sport for women in Africa and the Middle East. “We are already working on it and hopefully that will happen at the end of this year,” she said. “What I'm seeing now is that with my success sponsors have started to look more into tennis helping youngsters to try to reach the professional game.”