Egyptian tennis champion, Mayar Sherif, won her second WTA 125 tournaments title last Sunday, when she defeated Germany’s Tamara Korpatsch, in a highly competitive final, in Marbella, southern Spain.
Sherif became the first Egyptian tennis player to reach the WTA 125 tournaments final at the Winners Open, Cluj-Napoca, in August last year. She was also the Karlsruhe 125 champion in September of the same year.
She said the tournament is important in that it comes at the start of the clay-court season.
“Winning this tournament gives players a good push,” Sherif told the Egyptian Mail in an interview.
She said she always tries to raise her standard and such a win would help her compete and raise her standard even more.
“Ranking will be a normal outcome of winning the WTA 125 tournaments,” she said.
She said each competition has its own circumstances and the preparations she makes have to fit these circumstances.
These preparations, she said, also depend on the type of court, weather conditions and the tournament level.
Sherif, 25, trains for 3-4 hours every day in the buildup to these competitions. She also spends an additional two hours in the gym every day.
She struggled to meet conditions for playing on hard courts before the WTA 125 tournaments Marbella.
She joined the tournament with a meager 1-8 record in 2022, according to the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA).
Nevertheless, she managed to sweep through the draw of her preferred clay without dropping a set.
She also scored her first two top 100 wins of the season over No 8 seed Anna Karolina Schmiedlova 6-2, 6-2 in the quarter-finals, and over No 1 seed Danka Kovinic 7-5, 7-6(4) in the semi-finals.
She said every new match is a new challenge to her.
“I hold the same respect for each opponent,” Sherif said. “At this level, I play with top players and I have to be always well prepared and ready.”
The No. 61 in world rankings, Sherif graduated from Pepperdine University in Malibu, California in 2018 with a degree in sports medicine.
She was part of the university’s tennis team and was an All-American in both 2017 and 2018, and the West Coast Conference Player of the Year in 2018.
She made the semi-finals of the 2018 NCAA singles tournament and ended her senior season ranked 11th in the nation in singles.
She is the first Egyptian woman to be included in the list of the world’s top 100 tennis players.
She was the first to qualify for two Grand Slam tournaments. She was also the first Egyptian to win a match in a Grand Slam main draw.
She was the first woman to represent Egypt in Olympic tennis.
She is the first woman from the land of the pharaohs to participate and win a WTA.
Sherif hopes she can raise Egypt’s name high when she represents the Arab country in the FedCup competitions in Finland in the coming few weeks.
She will also participate in Roland Garros in May and then in Wimbledon.
“I am full of hope that I can perform well enough to fit the greatness of my country’s name,” Sherif said.
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