If and whenever we ask the question of why the Arab world at large has not produced a tennis player of any note and before we start trotting out the various excuses, one name should be enough to make all excuses redundant.
Because if Younes El Aynaoui made it as a professional tennis player, let alone an ultimately elite one, back in the 1990s, then there is no reason why another cannot and should not be doing so now.
There is only one Arab player, Tunisia's Malek Jaziri, in the top 100. He is 87th.
In 1990, when he was 18, El Aynaoui had to overcome all kinds of obstacles to even get into tennis. He was, as he acknowledges, fortunate to have a tennis court within walking distance of his Rabat home and an eager practice partner in elder brother Karim.
But basically “20 years ago in this region you had no tennis at all”, El Aynaoui said while in Abu Dhabi last week.
No real infrastructure and federations, like Morocco’s, either unwilling or incapable of promoting the sport in any real sense.
El Aynaoui had another specific problem, which is a broader cultural one.
“My father was totally against me going pro,” he said. “When I told him I wanted to become professional and stop studying, he was horrified. I was 18 at the time. He wanted me to continue studying like my older brother.”
El Aynaoui stood firm, though, and the pair did not speak for at least a year.
His dream had been conceived when he watched Yannick Noah beat Mats Wilander to win the 1983 French Open. To truly have a shot at achieving it, though, he had to leave home; there was no way he could make it training in Morocco.
So he went to Florida, to the Nick Bollettieri Academy. But El Aynaoui was not from an especially well-off family, nor was he considered good enough to be there on a scholarship, so he had to pay his way.
“I was coaching in the morning and in the afternoon practising myself,” he said. “Then I organised myself to practise the whole day and work at night.
“So I was looking after the kids in the evening, and it was my job to make sure their rooms were clean and they slept at a certain hour.”
He also drove the bus, would string rackets and clean the gym. He even babysat.
When he got onto the circuit, to financially sustain himself, he played in smaller tournaments populated by thinner competition. Unaided, he worked his way up the rankings steadily before breaking through in the mid-1990s.
Despite all the problems he faced, El Aynaoui reached a career-high ranking of 14, which raises the question of why someone has not emerged in recent times when it is at least a little easier to pursue a tennis career in the region?
El Aynaoui was at the sharp end of a brief golden era for Arab tennis. Alongside him in the top 25 were fellow Moroccans Hicham Arazi (who grew up mostly in France) and Karim Alami.
El Aynaoui acknowledged that their presence created a scenario where they pushed each other on to greater feats.
Alami and El Aynaoui are involved with tennis in the Arabian Gulf region; the former is the tournament director of the Qatar Open and the latter is helping with the Davis Cup side and, more generally, the development of the game in the same country.
“Of course, this is a big question why we haven’t had another prominent Arab player, but you can also look at the US currently,” El Aynaoui said. “One of the biggest nations in tennis, where they always used to have top 10 tennis players, today their No 1 player is John Isner. It’s really a tough thing.”
It must be taken into account, though, that the US has in the past produced a large number of the game’s greatest players and this current fallow period is, at least partly, a cyclical phenomenon.
Tennis in this region suffers from a lack of grass roots interest, although money cannot be considered a concern – though Alami has pointed out that tennis federations need to focus their finances better.
The sport does struggle with a lack of facilities, but for a guide to improvement in this area it is worth noting the case of Egypt and the tremendous legacy of its squash.
Egypt continues to produce some of the world’s greatest squash players. It is a legacy of their investment in making squash accessible and having built a robust infrastructure for it, which Egypt has done over decades.
Why, then, cannot another country in the region do the same for tennis, by far the more globally popular and better-rewarded sport, and so, theoretically, the easier to which to attract kids?
osamiuddin@thenational.ae
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