Arab Tennis Rising: From Ons Jabeur to the Saudi Masters, a Decade That Redraws the Map

The Pioneers: Arab Tennis Before the Boom

Arab tennis has deeper roots than the current headlines suggest. Egypt's Ismail El Shafei beat a young Björn Borg at Wimbledon in 1974 — still one of the tournament's great generational upsets. Morocco produced a golden men's generation around the turn of the century: Younes El Aynaoui, whose five-set Australian Open 2003 quarterfinal against Andy Roddick remains one of the longest and most loved matches ever played, alongside Hicham Arazi and Karim Alami. Tunisia's Selima Sfar became the first Arab woman to crack the WTA top 100, carrying the flag a generation before anyone made it look easy.

Ons Jabeur: The Minister of Happiness Who Changed Everything

Every movement needs a face, and Arab tennis found a perfect one. Ons Jabeur — Tunisian, self-taught in touch and mischief, nicknamed the 'Minister of Happiness' at home — reached three Grand Slam finals (Wimbledon 2022 and 2023, the US Open 2022) and a world ranking of No. 2. No Arab player, man or woman, had ever come close to that.

Her impact is hard to overstate: she made the drop shot cool again, made Tunisian flags a fixture on Centre Court, and — most importantly — made a tennis career look plausible to millions of Arab girls who had never seen anyone who looked like them hold a Venus Rosewater Dish runner-up plate and promise to come back. Egypt's Mayar Sherif, the first Egyptian woman to win a WTA title, is proof the path is widening.

The Money: Riyadh Rewrites the Prize List

The other engine is capital, and it is moving at Gulf speed. The WTA Finals were staged in Riyadh in 2024 and 2025 with a record prize pool — $15.25 million in year one, a 69% jump on the previous edition. Coco Gauff's 2024 title earned her $4.8 million; Elena Rybakina's 2025 win paid $5.235 million, the largest single-tournament prize in tennis history. WTA prize money overall hit a record $249 million in 2025, with Saudi funding driving a meaningful share of the growth.

The infrastructure is following the cheques. A National Tennis Centre at Qiddiya City — the largest in the Middle East, built to ATP, WTA and ITF standards — is under construction and could open as soon as 2027, with a Saudi Masters 1000 expected around 2028. The Next Gen ATP Finals already call Jeddah home. Whatever one thinks of the politics of sport-washing debates, the tennis fact is plain: the sport's calendar is acquiring a permanent Middle Eastern pole.

What an Arab Tennis Decade Could Look Like

Put the pieces together and the 2026–2035 window looks like this: an annual Gulf swing that already exists (Doha, Dubai, Abu Dhabi in February), a year-end presence (Riyadh), a Masters 1000 to anchor the calendar, and a generation of juniors in Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and the Gulf states growing up with Jabeur posters on their walls and world-class courts within reach for the first time.

The missing piece is the same one every emerging tennis nation faces: converting facilities and star power into a pipeline. Spain needed decades of clay academies; Italy's current golden era was twenty years of federation work in the making. The Arab world now has the stage and the story — the next Jabeur will tell us whether it built the school, too.

• Tunisian tennis players: Ons Jabeur and more →
• Egyptian tennis players: Mayar Sherif's history-making run →
• Tennis in the Middle East: courts, tournaments and when to watch →