The Davis Cup tie is over; Egypt won 5-0 against Georgia. The matches were pretty easy; the team we played against wasn’t tough, it was unexpected to win that easy because they had two good players who didn’t come. I won my singles and doubles in straight sets so by day two the tie was already over 3-0. We survived another year from moving down to group three, hopefully next year will be better and we get to play our first match at home in Cairo not on the fastest indoors carpet in some cold country 
Federer has made history! Roger broke all records in tennis again! He played one of the toughest mental matches in his career, this time he was playing to make history as the only player to win 15 Grand Slams. Roddick played his best tennis in his life and almost won the Wimbledon title but he just couldn’t finish it off, I think the turning point of the match was in the second set, he was 6-2 in the tie break and lost it. Being 2-0 up in the sets instead of 1-1 in a final against Roger would have made a huge difference, especially with how Roddick has been playing. Even one of the best players in the world, with the biggest serve, couldn’t win a tie break with a 6-2 lead… this is tennis
I’ve been wondering why do we play only on clay in Egypt? There is another option, and that’s hard-court. Who decided that tennis in Egypt should be played on clay? Is it because of our beautiful sunny weather? We can play on hard courts outdoors as well, like in the States. In Spain tennis is really big on clay; everybody plays on clay, but not exclusively! And there are excellent clay court players over there but that’s also because there are excellent clay courts! The courts we play on over here are really bad..
What I am trying to say is that either we start playing on hard courts or we start making good clay courts! Or, why not, do both! The clay courts that we have in Egypt are slippery, full of bad bounces, the lines are painted and they don’t have enough clay on them. As a professional player who traveled a lot and played on different surfaces I suggest that either we start making good clay courts, ones we can actually improve on, or just stick to hard courts that are anyway cheaper to maintain. Constructing clay courts is like building anything else, it’s a science, it can’t go wrong, there is step 1, step 2, step 3…. So why is it so difficult to do them? Why is it so difficult to do plastic lines? They say it’s because of the heat.. well there are lots of countries that have hot weather and still use the plastic lines, like Morocco and Tunisia. They got several good clay courts, why can’t we have one good court? Playing on good courts will improve tennis in general in Egypt and it will prevent injuries as well. I got injured because of extremely slippery courts, so I urge the new clubs that are being built everywhere to focus more on the quality of clay courts; and if those are expensive to maintain, then they should just stick to hard courts. At least this way we will start having hard court players instead of not having any of them: the clay court players can’t improve because the courts are similar to the hard ones but with some clay spread on them, and the hard court players can’t develop because they don’t have any hard courts to practice on.
It just hit me today that we have no men playing in our tournaments, that’s really disappointing. I am playing Shorouk touranament and only juniors are playing in the men’s tournament. That’s not because our seniors are not participating, it’s because there are no seniors anymore. We have two or three players above 20 who can play good tennis in Egypt and one or two of them play competitive tennis. How can we have top players and no one wants to continue or has the will to compete ?
Of course I can’t throw the blame only on the players, I’ve been around for a long time and I’ve seen several federations, our current federation surprised me this year with the amount of Futures that they planned on doing, I find this as a big step for our tennis players to compete and to improve, so all our juniors and few seniors should really benefit from all these tournaments and try to remember that what really counts is winning in Futures and Challengers not winning in some local tournaments under 16 or 18!
Everybody is so concerned with playing junior tournaments that it became a joke.You find parents and kids fighting and screaming for a match under 10 or 12 . I never played a tournament under 10 in my life, i really don’t know why there are tournaments for that age. Kids should enjoy the game not hate it , when someone loses a match his parents get so upset as if he lost in roland garros .In my opinion, junior tournaments are nothing but preparation for the important stuff which is men’s and women’s tournaments.
Parents and kids should relax more because here we are so concerned with all those tournaments that we don’t have players to compete in the men’s and women’s circuit. It’s a shame.
Fitness is one of the most significant aspects of modern tennis; if you’re not fit it becomes really difficult to compete, even if you are very talented. I’ve seen so many talented players wasted because of their lack of fitness that causes frequent injuries, among other consequences. It’s a real shame!
As a professional tennis player, I know how being fit is important for my career and how keeping in good shape, along with practicing on my technique, improves my mental state. The fitter you get the more confident and mentally tough you become!
