A professional tennis match turned into a farce on Wednesday when a player who appeared to have barely played the sport won just three points in a 6-0, 6-0 defeat – after telling tournament organizers she was at an appropriate level for the event.
Hajar Abdelkader, a 21-year-old Egyptian wildcard playing her first professional match, was beaten by Lorena Schaedel – a German ranked just outside the world’s top 1,000 – in the first round of a W35 event in Nairobi, part of the Women’s World Tennis Tour. It’s a level below the WTA Tour, but a W35 tournament offers a total prize pool of $30,000 and seven players were ranked among the world’s top 500 at the Nairobi event this week.
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Of the three points won by Abdelkader, two came from double faults by Schaedel. For the third, Abdelkader returned Schaedel’s serve, and the German – perhaps not expecting to hit a rally ball at all – missed long on a regulation forehand.
Abdelkader herself double-faulted on 20 of her 24 service points and barely managed to return Schaedel’s serve.
A request for an interview with Abdelkader was declined, while Schaedel did not immediately respond to a request. Tournament director Martha Tirop did not respond to a request for comment.
But in a statement sent to Athletics On Thursday, Tennis Kenya, which organizes the tournament, said Abelkader had received a wild card “following a short-term withdrawal from the recipient of the wild card originally awarded to the main draw, who opted for the qualifying draw.”
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He described the decision to award a wild card to Abelkdader as “made on the basis of the information provided and in the interest of maintaining a full and balanced draw while supporting the development of tennis in Africa.”
“With hindsight, Tennis Kenya recognizes that this wild card should not have been granted given the level. The federation has taken note of this experience and will ensure that such an extremely rare event never happens again.”
The match lasted only 37 minutes and would have been even shorter without Schaedel’s time recovering balls that Abdelkader had missed or failed to return over the net at the end of the points. There are no ballkids at this level.
The footage quickly went viral and the entire match was hosted on the ITF website. Ukrainian player Artem Bahmet had an even worse performance at a men’s Futures event in 2019, losing all 48 points to Thailand’s Krittin Koaykul in a 6-0, 6-0 defeat, but this was a qualifying match rather than a main draw match.
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There was a time when the World Tennis Tour was synonymous with bad conditions, bad salaries and such stories, but improvements have been made in recent years. And as players like Victoria Mboko, Loïs Boisson and Janice Tjen showed last year, the World Tennis Tour can be an excellent foundation for the rigors of the WTA Tour. Playing in countries with less tennis heritage like Kenya is also a way for the ITF to try to grow the sport.
But thanks to Abdelkader’s horror show, the World Tennis Tour has unwittingly provided one of the sporting stories of the year so far. And his serves on target, his ignorance of where to place himself when receiving and his unfortunate forehand attempts will unfortunately be remembered for a long time.
This article was originally published in Athletics.
Culture, Tennis, Women’s Tennis
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