Mayar Sherif was deep in a gruelling battle against former French Open semi-finalist Martina Trevisan last Wednesday in Paris when something suddenly clicked for the Egyptian.
It was early in the third set of her second round of Roland Garros qualifying and Sherif had just levelled the match, forcing a decider after two hours and 28 minutes play.
Her opening round of qualifying two days earlier lasted two hours and 49 minutes, and here she was once again, two and a half hours into a match and still needing to play, and win, an entire set to keep her chances alive of reaching the main draw of the French Open.
Sherif hadn’t needed to contest the qualifying rounds in Paris since 2021 because her ranking had been high enough to give her direct entry into the clay Grand Slam.
This year the Egyptian has been struggling though, and her ranking slipped to outside the top 100. Right before Roland Garros qualifying began, Sherif was just one ranking spot away from securing direct entry into the main draw; she just needed one more player to withdraw from the tournament so she could take their place.
But the withdrawal never came and she knew she had to earn her place in Paris the hard way, by winning three qualifying rounds on the city’s famed terre battue.
Out on Court 8 at 6-7, 7-5 against Trevisan, Sherif suddenly felt a shift in her mentality. After losing five of her previous seven deciding sets entering Roland Garros, Sherif was not ready to suffer another final-set defeat.
“I came here with no confidence, I've lost many matches while being so close to close and I couldn't close it. I've been mentally stuck in a place that I couldn't get out of for a long time,” the 30-year-old Cairene told The National at Roland Garros on Friday.
“The second match, playing Martina here, she's a very strong player. It's a very tough match for a second round of qualifying.
“But something clicked in that match. I lost the first set, I still couldn't close it out. I just had a problem that I talk about with my coach all the time, that I would step back every time that I'm about to close, or I'm about to win or anything. And I lost the first set I was 4-1 up in the second and she started playing unbelievable.”
Trevisan clawed her way back to 4-4 but Sherif stood her ground and took the second set 7-5. “In the third set it just clicked,” she added.
“And I started going after every shot, every point I started to talk to myself like that little kid at the very first French Open with the ambition of, hopefully, I can get that feeling again.
“And I got that feeling and I held onto it every single game. And if you look at that set, it was like a click; I was moving better after two hours and a half, she was physically destroyed, I got more energy. I was mentally, image-wise, attitude, the best compared to my entire year.
“I won that set 6-1, I closed it very well. She was playing very well at the end and it was a fight, the last game.”
Sherif carried over that feeling into the final round of qualifying on Thursday, which unlike her opening two marathon matches (which amounted to six hours and 11 minutes in total) was a breezy 6-3, 6-0 63-minute win against Greet Minnen.
Her reward is a sixth appearance in the main draw at Roland Garros and opening clash with Hungarian world No 117 Dalma Galfi.
But while clay is Sherif’s favourite surface and her focus is currently on the French Open, she’s already excited about what’s next and has every intention of getting her ranking back up – she hit a career-high 31 in the world three years ago – so she could play a full tour schedule.
“I told my coach, ‘That's it, I'm gonna be back in two months, we're gonna play Canada, Cincinnati and everything. Be ready’,” she proudly declared.
Sherif feels she lost her way because she was focusing on the wrong things. She changed her racket last year and ended up spending too much energy on trying to adapt to the new racket instead of just zeroing in on her game.
When she started losing matches she normally would never lose, she started panicking about dropping points and defending titles and making entry list cutoffs at the Grand Slams.
She realises now that was the wrong approach. “I know now how I'm supposed to think, how I'm supposed to play every point. And under pressure, how I'm supposed to think of my game and everything. And I'm just so happy that I got that back,” she said.
“Just to be humble again on the court, to think of the things that I have to do instead of thinking of the points to get into the Grand Slams, to get into that, to get into that.
"And finally when that gets in your head, you start shifting your thoughts, not on the things that you need to do, or how you feel on the court, in terms of enjoying even the pressure moments and everything, which I used to before.
“And for some reason I've been lost for a while and I got that feeling back in that third set with Martina.”
Sherif dug even deeper into why exactly she felt “lost”.
“I started losing to people that I've never lost to before. I started losing moments that I usually had the confidence to win 100 per cent,” she explained.
“You had to knock me out to beat me, especially on clay at the lower tournaments. So I started losing the confidence. I was like, shoot, I'm losing first and second rounds, what's going on? This panic, right? What's going on?
“We tried looking at the strings. We liked some stuff but then I'm realising now my mentality was so shifted to points, getting into Grand Slams, financial pressure, all this and all that, that I lost my way.
“I lost my motivation of the real goal, which is to dream big. Because I was thinking on the small goal, which is to qualify for the Grand Slam.”
So what is the big dream? "Now my goal is to be in Canada, Cincinnati and to do the whole tour again," she said. "Obviously I'm going to be in the qualifying of Wimbledon, which is fine," he But I'm very excited for hard courts this year. We have done a small modification in playing on hard courts with another string.
“And I'm really excited for hard courts this year because I think I'm going to do really well. I believe it, I have a different mentality now. And I'm really excited for what's coming, I'm looking forward for hard courts because I found that click in my mind and I want to have that click playing on hard courts and feel what I felt yesterday against a hard-court player.”
Sherif, who lives and trains in Spain, will be following both Egypt and Spain at the upcoming Fifa World Cup and she’s particularly keen to see how 18-year-old Hamza Abdelkarim will fare with the Pharaohs.
A recent recruit at Barcelona’s U19 team, Abdelkarim received a surprise call-up to Hossam Hassan’s World Cup squad after impressing in Spain over the last few weeks, scoring five goals in seven matches.
“I'm a big Barca fan, me and my coach. I'm very excited, I'm actually following him [Hamza] on social media and everything and I hope he gets to Barcelona’s first team; I think next year he will. I'm very excited,” said Sherif.
