Ons Jabeur’s history-making efforts inspire Moroccan teen duo to dream big in tennis
A few days ago, Malak El Allami, a 16-year-old from Casablanca, became the first Moroccan girl to win a singles match at Wimbledon when she advanced to second round of the juniors draw.
El Allami, who turns 17 later this month, is ranked 41 in the ITF world junior rankings and teamed up with her compatriot Aya El Aouni to win a round in the Roland Garros junior doubles event in Paris a few weeks ago.
El Aouni cracked the top-30 in the world junior rankings in May and at 18, is preparing to step up to the professional tour and launch a career in the sport.
In separate interviews at Wimbledon this week, El Allami and El Aouni were asked who their favorite player was growing up. The Moroccan duo responded with no hesitation: “Ons Jabeur.”
Jabeur is the most successful Arab athlete in tennis history, peaking at No.2 in the world last year after making two major finals. On Saturday, the Tunisian has a chance to become the first ever African-born Grand Slam singles champion, and the first from the Arab world.
Jabeur always reminded the public that she was a “100 percent product of Tunisia” and her success on the global stage has inspired El Allami, El Aouni, and countless others from the region to dream about following in her footsteps.
Egyptian Mayar Sherif hit a career-high ranking of 31 last month, and was seeded at a Grand Slam for the first time at these Wimbledon championships. Sherif says witnessing Jabeur’s ascent to the top echelons of the sport constantly pushes her to work harder and strive for more.
It’s no different for teenagers El Allami and El Aouni as they embark on their own journeys.
“She’s a really great person and whenever we see her here at Wimbledon, she says hi and she asks about my matches and everything. She’s a really nice person,” said El Allami of Jabeur, who knew Malak’s older sister Fatima from their early tennis days together on the junior circuit.
“It helps of course to see players like Ons and Mayar do so well. Because you see that people from countries that are close to yours, and from cultures that are close to yours, achieving so many great things, while people always say that tennis is not for us.
“So when you see them doing great things like that, you believe even more and it motivates you to work very hard.”
El Aouni marvels at Jabeur’s “special game” and says it’s perfectly suited for grass, a surface the Moroccan is not too familiar with and has admittedly struggled on this week in the junior event.
“When you see Ons Jabeur winning tournaments and making finals of Grand Slams, it helps us a lot. It motivates us,” says El Aouni.
Both El Allami and El Aouni come from tennis families and the sport runs in their blood.
“I started playing tennis in Casablanca way before I can remember and I fell in love with the sport,” said El Allami.
“My dad is a coach and my brothers as well, so I started playing with my brother and I started getting better, then I got into the national tennis center and I’ve been practicing with them forever and I really hope to do great things in the sport.”
El Allami is coached by her father Mokhtar, her brothers Mohamed and Omar, and also gets help from the Moroccan Tennis Federation, who have provided French coach Cyril Genevois to accompany her at Wimbledon.
She says the federation, as well as the Moroccan National Olympic Committee, have invested a lot in her, covering her travel costs to tournaments, and providing coaches, physios and everything she needs in order to advance in the sport.
Wimbledon was the first time El Allami stepped on grass for a match (she couldn’t play the junior grass-court event in Roehampton the previous week due to delays in her UK entry visa) and despite feeling uncomfortable at first, her aggressive game style helped her get an opening-round victory over American Anya Murthy.
El Allami says she dreamed of becoming a champion from a very young age and gained more belief in herself over the last two years when she started doing well against tough opposition. She is ambitious by nature and speaks with confidence and wisdom beyond her years.
“I think it’s more the kind of person I am. I’m someone who if I’m doing something, I want to be the best at it. Because if I’m doing it anyways, then I might as well be the best,” she declares.
“In the 2021 Junior Billie Jean King Cup, my country, we came in sixth, and that was a first for Arabs and Africa and everything and we played with the best in the world in our categories; so that made us believe that we’re close and we could compete with them,” she added.
“So I think it’s then that I started to believe more in what we could do in Morocco.”
Besides Jabeur, El Allami also admires Serena Williams “because she has such an aggressive game and her mentality is really strong”, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, “because Nadal everything he does is just so impressive”.
She hasn’t decided yet is she will go to the United States for university and play college tennis, or if she will pursue a career on the professional tour straight out of high school.
“The goal at the end is to have a career as a pro tennis player. I’m not against the idea of college. So if in these two years I don’t have a lot of success, I will go to college, as Mayar did, and now she’s playing really well,” explained El Allami, noting how Sherif excelled for Pepperdine University before transitioning to the professional circuit and rocketing up the rankings.
“So you see that even if you go to college and keep working hard and have your goals in your head, then why shouldn’t it work?”
El Allami trains at the SOC club, Stade Olympique Casablancais, back home and says she and El Aouni practice together almost every day. There aren’t many others at their level though, and travelling abroad for university could help her share the court with more players and tougher opposition.
She’s proud to be representing Morocco together with El Aouni.
“I think it’s an excellent thing because we push each other to do great things and we can practice with each other. As we practice with each other every day, so when we see each other, the other one playing good, we even believe more because the other one is doing great results. So we believe more in what we can do,” she said.
El Aouni got into tennis through her father Abdelrahim and is currently coached by her uncle Hamid Abdelrazaq.
The El Allamis and El Aounis have known each other even before Malak and Aya were born, which naturally let to the pair becoming good friends, practice partners and teammates.
El Allami has started playing ITF professional events but admits mentally she still has come work to do in order to get the results she knows she can achieve.
“I see some players that those players if I played them in the juniors, I would beat them. But as I’m playing them and in my mind it’s on the professional tour, it gets tougher. I don’t know why, when I figure it out, I will break through,” she concedes.
“So I think that working on the transition from the juniors to the WTA, it’s very important to start it early so you have time to adapt.”
If given the chance to have proper sit-downs with Jabeur or Sherif, El Allami knows exactly what she’d like to ask them.
“I’d ask Ons what made her keep believing in herself? Because she won Roland Garros juniors and she didn’t rank quickly during the seniors, and like 10 years later she did great things. So just to have that kind of strength and bravery is like incredible,” says El Allami.
“And Mayar, I just want to know, because I mean going to college and still fighting for your goals (on the professional tour), is incredible so I’d like to ask her how she got that done?”
As the legendary Billie Jean King says, “you have to see it to be it”, and lucky for El Allami and El Aouni, Jabeur and, more recently Sherif, are providing an excelling blueprint for young players from North Africa and the Arab world to pursue their dreams in the world of professional tennis.
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