{"id":398115,"date":"2026-01-09T23:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T23:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/398115\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T23:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T23:20:08","slug":"hajar-abdelkader-international-tennis-federation-to-review-wildcard-entries-after-viral-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/398115\/","title":{"rendered":"Hajar Abdelkader: International Tennis Federation to review wildcard entries after viral performance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The outcome showed this was clearly not the case and was unacceptable for a World Tennis Tour event, along with being unfortunate for the player,&#8221; the spokesperson added. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We acknowledge proportionate measures must be taken to prevent this happening again. We are exploring ways to ensure that, by assessing the process of awarding wildcards with consideration to a minimum playing standards requirement to compete at a WTT event.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">On Thursday, Tennis Kenya acknowledged Abdelkader should not have been allowed to play, but said she had been given a wildcard spot at the last minute following the withdrawal of another player. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The organisation said she was permitted to enter to maintain a balance of players and nations represented in the tournament, but said that in hindsight she should not have been allowed to play.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Both Abdelkader and Schaedel have been offered support by Tennis Kenya &#8220;given the extent and nature of coverage of this match&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Egyptian Tennis Federation, meanwhile, said it had no records relating to Abdelkader, and said she had never been affiliated with the organisation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;The outcome showed this was clearly not the case and was unacceptable for a World Tennis Tour event,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-398115","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\/398115","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=398115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}