Tennis Kenya said a controversial wildcard granted to Hajar Abdelkader should not have happened after the young Egyptian\u2019s performance at a professional tournament in Nairobi went viral.<\/p>\n
The 21-year-old won three points and served 20 double faults on her way to a 6-0, 6-0 defeat against German world No 1,026, Lorena Schaedel. Videos shared on social media showed the Egyptian struggling to serve and position herself on the court.<\/p>\n
While the practice of favouring local players when awarding wildcards is widespread, including in grand slam and WTA tournaments, Abdelkader\u2019s level of play has raised question marks about the wisdom of awarding her a place in a tournament sanctioned by the International Tennis Federation (ITF).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In a statement released on Thursday, Tennis Kenya said: \u201cMs Abdelkader was granted a wildcard for week two of the event after submitting a formal request,\u201d after a \u201cshort-notice withdrawal by the originally intended recipient\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the time, Ms Abdelkader was the only other player who had requested a wildcard,\u201d the federation said, which was therefore granted to her based on the \u201cinformation provided\u201d by the player \u201cand in the interest of maintaining a full and balanced draw while supporting the development of tennis in Africa.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn hindsight, Tennis Kenya acknowledges that this wildcard should not have been granted. The federation has taken note of this experience and will ensure that such an extremely rare occurrence never happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ITF said the decision to grant invitations for the Nairobi tournament was the responsibility of Tennis Kenya. In a statement published on Facebook, the Egyptian Tennis Federation also denied having played any role in awarding the wildcard to Abdelkader.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe is not registered with the Egyptian Tennis Federation and is not listed on any of our official player rosters,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
According to the player\u2019s profile on the ITF website, the Egyptian played the first professional match of her career in Nairobi.<\/p>\n
Tennis Kenya said it was mindful of the impact the media coverage and social media comments might have on both the players involved in the match.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a young person and given the extent and nature of coverage of this match, Tennis Kenya and the ITF recognise the need to keep the wellbeing of both players as a primary consideration,\u201d Tennis Kenya said in a statement. \u201cBoth organisations have reached out to the two players to offer support.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tennis Kenya said a controversial wildcard granted to Hajar Abdelkader should not have happened after the young Egyptian\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-396153","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}