Egyptian tennis player Hagar Abdelkader has become the subject of a heated debate in the international media following her debut in the professional circuit. Her first steps at the Nairobi International Tennis Tournament have gone down as one of the most shocking matches in the sport's history, according to fans and critics. The British newspaper Daily Mail covered the incident in an extensive report, describing Hagar as one of the weakest players to ever compete in an official tournament. The report questioned how she was permitted to compete in a professional event featuring players with advanced world rankings. ITF tournaments, despite their lower status, are considered a genuine gateway for serious competition and the gradual return of professional players. The 21-year-old Egyptian, who entered via a wild card, participated in a W35 category tournament with a prize fund of £22,000. She suffered a crushing defeat to German player Lorin Schiedel, ranked 1026th in the world. The match, which lasted only 37 minutes, ended with a score of 6-0, 6-0 in her opponent's favor. The statistics of the match clearly reflected the vast technical gap. Throughout the game, Hagar managed to win only three points, mostly due to her opponent's unforced errors. She failed to win a single point on her first serve, which had a success rate of only 8.3%. In addition, she committed 20 double faults and often appeared out of position during returns. The report also highlighted that her technique with the racket and difficulty in receiving serves raised wide questions about her competitive readiness, despite official data from the International Tennis Federation indicating she had been playing the sport since she was 14. The Nairobi match marked her first appearance at a professional tournament level. The controversy did not stop at her on-court performance but extended to the circumstances of her wild card entry. This is particularly significant given the strict integrity and anti-corruption regulations in tennis, which prohibit any financial or illegal exploitation of the complimentary entry system, restricting their issuance to purely regulatory decisions by the tournament's governing body. According to the report, the Egyptian player benefited from the late withdrawal of a Kenyan player just before the tournament began. This prompted the Kenyan Tennis Federation to hastily award the vacant spot without disclosing clear details or technical criteria for the selection, which contributed to escalating questions about the mechanisms for granting wild cards in such tournaments.
