Shelbayh first Jordanian to play a Grand Slam
By virtue of cracking the top 50 in the ITF junior world rankings, Abedallah Shelbayh enters the main draw of the Junior French Open to be held in a few days at Stade Roland Garros (June 6–12).
As a Jordanian tennis player and fan, I revel in this achievement.
Memory takes me back to a cold, damp evening in January 2014.
I was competing in a local men’s qualifying tournament in Amman at the Jordan Tennis Federation.
I was mainly participating to get in shape and have fun, but part of me missed competing with good players.
Many years prior, I was briefly a member of Jordan’s men’s national team and, some time before that, I had played for many years on Jordan’s national junior team.
We went to Italy, Cyprus, Iraq, Florida, and other places. You could say I developed a lifelong love for the game of tennis.
I was never the best player on Jordan’s team, but for a while I was decent at tennis. Although I was rusty by 2014, I could still kick a few high-level, club-playing butts every once in a while.
As the tournament commenced, I felt good and was hitting the ball cleanly and with purpose.
I won my first match handily 6–4, 6–1, and was feeling that I could qualify for the main event.
Then I ran into Abedallah. Mind you, Abedallah was ten years old.
I had seen him play a few days before at the Jordan Tennis Federation and was impressed, but I wasn’t sure how good he was.
I knew that despite the difference in age and experience, he was probably going to beat me. His strokes landed right on the baseline. Abedallah hit the crap out of the ball without ever seeming to miss.
Still, I didn’t expect that he would steamroll through our match the way he did. I believed then and there, that Abedallah was already one of the best juniors in the world for his age.
Usually when I would play a good player, and I have played against many, I would find a way to rattle them and poke holes in their games
Advanced juniors, like club players, tend to prefer hitting hard. They can also rally well.
But, very often, they struggle when you vary the pace and experiment with depth and height.
So, for example, if you start occasionally slicing the ball and aiming low, or, conversely, hitting with a lot of topspin above their shoulder level, or if you suddenly change the speed of your ball, they begin to miss and get frustrated.
Abedallah was not like that.
I had never seen such a young kid play so well, not even in California, where I had played a ton of tennis over several years with many advanced players, including former ATP players and a number of NCAA Division I competitors.
If I sliced the ball, he would either slice it back or get to it so fast that he could hit an outright winner.
If I varied the pace, he would vary his pace back. If I brought him to the net, he would finish the ball with a nice angled volley. If I went to the net, he would pass me right away. And he was intelligent and strategic on the court. For example, he could tell that I was getting tired. So he started to move me side to side, front to back, back to front. And he would wrong-foot me again and again.
In particular, I remember that his backhand was insanely good that day. He could hit angled cross-court backhand winners even when he was on the run and way out of position.
And I don’t mean angles like you and I hit at the club. I mean real angles like the ones you see on TV, the ones you need real speed to get to in order to cover the baseline.
The match was over before it really began, 6–2, 6–2.
I knew that this kid was special. I was shocked by his level that I told everybody I know about him. And I’ve never stopped.
Soon, I would be reading about Abedallah’s results online.
As far as Arab tennis was concerned, Abedallah established himself as the best rising junior in the Arab world quite early on.
This was an honor usually held by players from North Africa and rarely from the Levant. And certainly never before from Jordan.
On a wider regional level also, he was the best early on. For example, Abedallah won a prestigious event in Turkey when he was 11 or 12. He was also holding his own against the best European juniors soon after on the Tennis Europe Junior Tour and doing well in Asian Federation events.
In 2017, he won the Lemon Bowl U-14 singles tournament in Italy.
Abedallah then started winning ITF junior events (18/U). His progress was consistent and his ranking gradually improved from about 500 in the world a few years ago to number 39 in the world this year.
On the way, Abedallah won 13 ITF junior events (six in singles and seven in doubles). He also won the Orange Bowl 16s event in doubles (around that time, Abedallah achieved the fourth best UTR rating among 16 year olds in the world).
In the men’s circuit, Abedallah reached the semifinals of the M-15 (Futures) singles event in Manacor in 2020 and posted a 5–0 winning record in Davis Cup singles and doubles. He also won a Futures men’s doubles event.
Today, Abedallah trains at the Rafa Nadal Academy in Spain and hits with the great Rafa himself regularly. He has maintained his characteristic humility and good nature.
What the future holds for Abedallah in tennis may not be crystal clear quite yet, as it depends on many factors. He has accepted a full athletic scholarship with the University of Florida, which has one of the best varsity tennis programs in the United States.
I believe he can make it in the pros. There are no heights in tennis that are too high for him to scale, but it is really up to him.
For now, I am just going to enjoy the fact that he made it to the Grand Slams… a welcome consolation for my loss to Abedallah when he was ten in 2014.
