Wildcards + Retired Players

Sada Nahimana is a name few people recognise, but the 25-year-old Burundian has one of the most incredible stories in tennis. Growing up in Bujumbura, the economic capital and largest city in the landlocked country surrounded by the stable, yet despotic countries of Rwanda and Tanzania and the civil-war stricken Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nahimana used to cruise around the tennis courts of the fancy hotels, trading court time for “ball-picking” and hitting used tennis balls with whatever she could find. The only player from such a remote, practically unknown sub-Saharan African region, Nahimana nonetheless won a coveted spot at the International Tennis Federation/Confederation of African Tennis (ITF/CAT) Regional Training Centre, then located in Casablanca, Morocco. From there, her career took off and with some luck, she managed to climb to WTA No. 252 and along the way, knock off three-time Grand Slam quarterfinalist Ajla Tomljanovic (WTA No. 94) at the Grand Prix SAR La Princesse Lalla Meryem — the only WTA-professional tournament on the continent of Africa — where she received her one and only wildcard. 

Sada Nahimana (WTA No. 254) playing the Junior U.S. Open in 2018. She would go on to play the ITF World Tour, moving on to Challengers and then low-level pro events — the only player in Burundi’s history to achieve such heights. 

Eliakim Coulibaly is another unknown name in tennis who comes with a Hollywood story. From the rough-and-tumble streets of Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, Coulibaly began his tennis career thanks to his father, who taught him everything before leaving to teach at a tennis club in Tunisia. Following a stint also at the ITF/CAT Regional Training Centre, the born-again, Christian French-Open champion Mary Pierce recognised Coulibaly’s talent and brought him to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius to train. From there, he started on the ITF Futures tour, gradually climbing to the 400s and then his journey took him to the Mouratoglou Academy as a scholarship student. Now ranked No. 314 on the ATP, it nonetheless took a while for the Ivorian to gain confidence. “It was a new world for me,” Coulibaly told The Guardian in 2020. “When I saw someone playing, I was so scared. I was always putting myself down. Even if I saw someone I know I can beat, I always told myself: ‘No, he’s much better than you.’”

Eliakim Coulibaly at the ITF/CAT Regional Training Centre in Casablanca, Morocco in 2018. He arrived at the school with two Babolats in a sports bag — not much else. When he landed on tour Coulibaly heard people laughing at him. He supposed it was because he came from Africa and how he stood out among his rivals in their spotless sponsored outfits. 

What do these two player have in common, besides coming from a continent without a professional-level tour? Neither has ever received a wildcard to a Grand-Slam level event, the qualifiers of a Grand Slam or anything relatively close. They have fought for every piece of equipment they have, from dead balls to used racquets, every tournament entry gained and every last opportunity granted. And if the system doesn’t change soon, these players will be left to contemplate what could have been while instructing other hopefuls in China, Europe, America or one of the other developed countries instead of realising their own dreams. 

The role of tennis wildcards has received significant scrutiny in the past three months, as Grand Slam country federations wield them with the ruthlessness of a 1950s American country club. Without a pro tour in sub-Saharan Africa Central Asia, Southeast Asia and most of the Middle East, however, the majority of aspiring players there are left with little prospect to progress beyond their regions unless they are spotted by an agent, recruited by the ITF for an academy or get picked up by a player — ala Arthur Ashe and Yannick Noah — and whisked off to another country to train. Either that, or their parents uproot their families Sharapova-style and attempt to migrate to an unwelcoming country with more opportunities. 

The wildcard debate recently reached fever-pitch with the offering of four to an unranked Serena Williams: a doubles wildcard to play the HSBC Queens Championship with Victoria Mboko (the Canadian daughter of immigrants from the Democratic Republic of the Congo), another doubles wildcard for the Berlin Open, and lastly a Wimbledon doubles wildcard to play with her sister Venus, despite having no WTA ranking and having not played a tour-level match since declaring retirement in 2022. The real stickler to players in the minor leagues of tennis, however, came when Wimbledon held a singles wildcard for more than a week waiting on the 23-time Grand Slam champ to decide whether she wanted to chance a return to Centre Court. 

Tournaments are allowed to grant wildcards to whomever they want and usually reserve them for local talent and to attract celebrity players, thus increasing ticket sales. Although fully sold out for months, with queues in the thousands and not a seat to spare in the house, Wimbledon didn’t necessarily need the star power, nor is it known to kowtow to anyone, except royalty. Yet, tournament officials put Williams at a prime-time spot and pitted her against upstart Australian Maya Joint (WTA No. 87) who had lost 13 of her last 14 matches — an opponent Williams would have crushed in her glory days. But after having two children, suffering from a chronic medical history of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolisms, focusing her life on her VC firm, Serena Ventures, and skipping out on four years on court, the 44-year-old’s body couldn’t hold up to a player 24 years her junior. (Williams’ humanity was painfully obvious at the Queen’s Club two weeks prior with her serve doing most of the work, leaving the 19-year-old Mboko to snatch the deep, wide shots.) Williams lost the match in three sets after Joint, 20, forfeited a bit of nerve while playing an idol. The woman hailed as Queen of the Court gave her opponent a perfunctory handshake, skipped out on her post-match presser citing a knee injury and headed home, leaving coach Rennae Stubbs and agent Jill Smoller left to defend her. “The hate and lack of empathy in this world is astounding to me. Especially when you have no idea what you're talking about. Just blows my mind,” wrote Stubbs, Williams’ outgoing coach for her last U.S. Open on 2022 and the one she retained for her comeback, on X.

Serena Williams exchanging words and water with doubles partner Victoria Mboko at the HSBC Queens Club Championships, a Wimbledon tune-up. The match filled seats at the women’s session, which had struggled to hold interest in its first year back. 

“I wish people got to know athletes more personally. I wish people got to truly understand what makes them tick — what makes someone walk back toward the very thing that already gave her everything, and could just as easily take some of it back,” Stubbs wrote in her Substack newsletter the week before the tournament. “And I wish you got to experience the human, the mum, the sister, the daughter, the absolute jokester she is, because all great athletes in the end, are just human beings.”

Yes, true, athletes like Serena Williams are just human beings, as are Nahimana, Coulibaly and the countless ball “pickers” who trade labour for court time at the clubs around Africa, such as the Lagos Lawn Tennis Club in Nigeria. Human beings are also found grinding it out on the ITF Futures and Challengers tours, week-after-week-after-week. Athletic human beings bring along racquet stringers to earn money while on tour, wait for days at international airports for visa approvals (if they come from an undesirable country), sleep in budget hotels or in strangers’ homes in order to save money and cut corners to have enough to play the next tournament so that one day — one day — they might reach the pinnacle of tennis. They are all phenomenally talented, hard-working, and dedicated and they deserve the same chance Serena Williams got, spent and — after nearly 30 years of being the centre of the tennis universe — gave up. 

Two ball “pickers” shagging balls and waiting for an empty court at the Lagos Lawn Tennis Club in Lagos, Nigeria, February 2018. Most young African players get their start as ball pickers; if they’re lucky, have their talent noticed before embarking on The Grind of the minor leagues. 

Despite popular belief, most greats who retire don’t go gently into their goodnights. They become tournament directors, tennis commentators, association officials, podcasters and foundation leaders, all with time to spare to play Grand Slam exhibitions — and still have their egos stroked. During the height of his career and the post-colonial revolutions of the 1970s, another GOAT, Arthur Ashe, took his buddy, Stan Smith, on a State Department tour of sub-Saharan Africa. The pair crossed the continent giving clinics, playing local exhibitions and paving the way for Ashe to subvert segregation in South Africa. Before he officially retired, Ashe also founded the World Championship Tennis circuit and brought professional players to places like Lagos, Nigeria, Nairobi, Kenya, Johannesburg, South Africa, Yaoundé, Cameroon and other African cities to grow the sport. Some might say he even found his true calling in being a goodwill ambassador to the United Nations to end apartheid for good and raising the next generation of athletes. Others have followed in his footsteps, including Vania King, a doubles specialist who founded Serving Up Hope to help advance the sporting ambitions of youngsters in Uganda, as well as Ons Jabeur, who has used her fame and money to extend her tennis privilege to other Arab men and women through the Ons Jabeur Foundation. Retired is a state of mind. 

Meanwhile, athletes who prematurely depart their sport — particularly due to injury, burnout, or financial pressure — face a significantly higher risk of mental health struggles than those who leave on their own terms, according to a study by the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Those who play professional tennis — a highly isolating and individual sport that requires life dedication — face depression, anxiety, disordered eating, substance abuse, and even suicide, largely due to the fact that their entire identities are wrapped up in aspirations never fully realised. Wildcards have great power: they can deliver a dream to a struggling rookie in the minor leagues or they can be used to satisfy the whim of a restless former champion who has already had her moment in the sun. Whose dream was sacrificed this Wimbledon fortnight? Whose opportunity lost? Williams? Or the players on their last legs, still waiting for the tennis gods to smile upon them.