Going through the toughest period of her life and coming out the other side has totally transformed Mayar Sherif.<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old Egyptian is the most successful tennis player from her country and peaked at No 31 in the world in the summer of 2023.<\/p>\n
The Pepperdine University graduate spent nearly five years ranked in the top 100, and has featured in 19 Grand Slam main draws.<\/p>\n
She is the first and only Egyptian<\/a> to win a WTA title and has competed in two Olympic Games.<\/p>\n Renowned for her unrelenting fighting spirit, her unorthodox topspin forehand, and her ability to grind through three-plus hour matches on her beloved clay, Sherif<\/a> started to detect chinks in her armour over the past 12 months.<\/p>\n She was losing matches she wasn\u2019t accustomed to losing and her ranking slipped to as low as 129 \u2013 her lowest since February 2021 \u2013 a couple of months ago.<\/p>\n Today, the Cairene is back up to 55 in the world after winning three titles in a row \u2013 two at the WTA 125 level in Brescia and Contrexeville, and one at the WTA 250 level in Iasi, Romania.<\/p>\n She has won 15 of her last 16 matches \u2013 the only blemish came on grass in Wimbledon qualifying \u2013 and is riding a wave of confidence she has worked so hard to rebuild.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things that I’m good at is that I’m mentally very strong. When I come to close the match, I’m very strong. It’s very tough to beat me,\u201d Sherif told The National in an interview from Hamburg on Tuesday.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the match is 4-all or 5-all, I usually felt that mentally it\u2019s very tough to beat me. But I was losing those moments so many times this year. I was very frustrated. I felt like I’m missing out on the things that make me special on the court.<\/p>\n \u201cI don’t have the best technique or the best looking tennis. But I’m a hard worker. I’m a fighter. I’m mentally very tough. That’s why I got to where I am.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn’t accept that I was getting it wrong. The things that make me special, I was not special anymore. That was very frustrating. It shook my confidence in such a big way.\u201d<\/p>\n Sherif described how bad it got for her on court during matches as she let anxiety take over.<\/p>\n \u201cI went through a period this year I had never experienced before on the court,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n \u201cI reached a point where my hand was shaking as I was serving from all the anxiety of not wanting to lose the same way again and again. Not wanting to get disappointed again and again. I really had such a hard time.<\/p>\n \u201cSo to get out of this and have again one of the best results of my career (winning a second tour-level title). I’m really, really proud of myself for it.\u201d<\/p>\n Sherif said she worked hard with her psychologist, as well as her coach Justo Gonzalez, to get out of her \u201cmental hole\u201d.<\/p>\n In April, she lost a fourth consecutive match and decided to pull out of the Madrid Open because she couldn\u2019t take it anymore. She took a week off and went to visit her sister, Rana, in Warsaw.<\/p>\n \u201cMentally I was at one of the lowest moments, not just in my career, but I would say in life in general,\u201d Sherif admitted.<\/p>\n Despite being in desperate need for a break, Sherif dragged her sister to the practice courts every day just for the sake of hitting, with no real purpose behind it.<\/p>\n She was training because she wanted to and not because she had to.<\/p>\n When they weren\u2019t on court, Sherif took the time to have some fun \u2013 a luxury for any tennis player who competes for nearly 11 months a year.<\/p>\n \u201cMy trip to Warsaw was very important. It was like a reset. I was very happy there. I was seeing a lot of Egyptian people. My sister has a lot of friends there. There is a great Egyptian community there, I was shocked actually. We went to see a funny Egyptian movie; I haven\u2019t laughed this hard in my life. I did a lot of things that made me feel like a normal person,\u201d said Sherif.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt like a normal person. I felt happy. I felt that there is another life waiting for me afterwards. So, it’s worth it to make the effort now to get a comfortable life later.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I realised how much I love tennis. Because when I stopped playing tennis, I really wanted to get back to it. I really wanted to get back to the competition and do well. I wanted to feel what I feel now. I wanted to feel the success. I wanted to feel that the hard work is paying off. I wanted to feel that after I failed so many times, I’m going to succeed afterwards. Because of course the satisfaction now is huge. It’s really huge.\u201d<\/p>\n