The Relentless Rise of Tennis Champion Abedallah Shelbayh
Back in the summer of 2021, a surprised British TV commentator introduced Jordanian tennis player Abedallah Shelbayh (pronounced Abdullah Shilbayeh) to the world.
Shelbayh was one of four young men contesting the Wimbledon junior doubles finals that year.
“It’s nice to see someone from Jordan…” the slightly bewildered commentator remarked.
“That’s a country without any tennis pedigree…” he continued (or something along those lines).
Ouch.
Prior to Shelbayh’s rise, tennis in Jordan was always a modest affair.
But there was some tennis.
People began hitting tennis balls in the country mostly in the second half of the twentieth century. Partly because tennis is an expensive sport and Jordan is a relatively poor country with few resources, the country never got very far in the sport.
To be sure, Jordan did have some good players and began fielding a Davis Cup team in 1989.
Many of the matches were played indoors on a painted-over multi-purpose court in the Sports Palace Hall, located in the King Hussein Sports City.
Local spectators had fun watching Jordanian players duking it out against competitors from other nations. We even had the great Mansour Bahrami, a comedic showman and well-known tennis genius come to play in Amman.
Over the years, Jordan continued to compete, often posting reasonable results. But because no Jordanian had come remotely close to making a mark in the higher echelons of professional tennis competition, play in these lower-tier Davis Cup groups amounted to the ultimate achievement and national sports contribution in the eyes of local fans and journalists.
Many of our players internalized this perspective as well, which is not unusual in other Levantine countries. Our players would play tennis at a high level at home, but often when they would travel outside of Jordan they would quickly unravel.
Aboud was never like that.
A precocious talent with a fiery game and a fiercely strong and competitive mindset, Abedallah Shelbayh quickly became a formidable junior player.
In fact, Aboud (Abedallah’s nickname) began winning local, regional, and international events from age 8.
By the time he turned 16, Aboud was one of the best four or five players in the world relative to his age.
Today, his tennis CV is illustrious: a Lemon Bowl in singles, two Orange Bowl titles in doubles, multiple ITF junior titles, multiple ITF “Futures” men’s titles, an Arab Master’s title, and several strong showings at the ATP Challenger level.
His growing list of victims on the court is also long and impressive: Dominic Stricker (winner of the 2020 French Open junior title and semifinalist in the ATP NextGen men’s finals); Salvatore Caruso (an experienced former top-100 ATP player); ATP singles world number 79 and reigning Australian Open men’s doubles champion Jason Kubler; and arguably the three best Arab men’s players on the ATP tour (Skander al-Mansouri, Benjamin Hassan, and Aziz Dougaz, who are all, I should add, older than Shelbayh).
Accordingly, Shelbayh is now, by my estimation, the best Arab men’s tennis player by some distance — his ATP ranking will bear this out in a little time.
I also happen to believe that Aboud will be one of the best men’s players in the world period from any country.
With some further improvement, he may even end up winning a Grand Slam men’s title, or perhaps even multiple Grand Slam titles.
Who knows? It is possible as he keeps getting better. If things keep going the way they have been, he will play in the ATP NextGen Finals at the end of this year.
Ironically, although Aboud has been celebrated in sports publications in Spain, other parts of Europe, and the United States, he hasn’t been widely acknowledged yet in Jordan.
Despite how clearly good Abedallah was and continues to be as a tennis player, and no matter what he achieves in the tennis world, I always sense a disconcerting degree of psychological resistance (or at the very least skepticism) to what he achieves in Jordan and the Arab world more broadly in the tennis community and beyond.
There is an almost stubborn disbelief in the potential of a native son to make it in this game. It seems as if few can even fathom the idea that a Jordanian could do well in global tennis, which probably goes back to the inferiority complex that people feel.
Over the years, I have seen this first-hand. People just do not believe you when you tell them that a Jordanian is going to make it in professional tennis. If he wins an event, they’d say that the competition is weak. If he wins a tougher event, they’d point to a younger player with a higher rank.
And so on.
It is not ill will that drives this kind of thinking, but more so the kind of psychological disbelief that I mentioned earlier.
Similarly, when Aboud opted out of Jordan’s Davis Cup tie against El Salvador (played earlier this month), a lot of unnecessary, negative energy surfaced as well.
Almost immediately, he was unfairly criticized and a number of poorly founded theories and unkind comments began to appear: for example, that his contracts and sponsors prohibited him from playing (obviously incorrect because tennis contracts almost never prohibit Davis Cup participation) and that he somehow felt above his homeland by disregarding his national obligation to the Davis Cup (never mind that he proudly told the ATP after a superb performance in a tough Challenger event in Spain that “To do something for your country is a great achievement…I hope many players from Jordan show their talent in the near future and I hope I can inspire them as much as possible”).
And never mind that he had single handedly put the country on the tennis world’s radar and had just recently won the Arab Masters tournament, not to mention the fact that the country’s Davis Cup team wouldn’t have been in the playoff against El Salvador in the first place had he not traveled all the way to Dubai and Vietnam to train and to represent Jordan at a time when he had a stomach bug and a number of recent injuries.
Moreover, despite the numerous difficult life decisions he had to take, a number of injuries along the way, and his very young age of 19, Shelbayh has in fact represented Jordan in the Davis Cup on two separate occasions in 11 matches, winning ten of them (ironically, the one match he lost, in my opinion, he may have actually won — a serve he fired when he had match point looked in but was called out).
The explanation for his decision to withdraw from the Davis Cup is understandable: the tie roughly coincided with three big events going on this month (the type of events that tennis players work their entire lives to try to make). And maybe he just wanted time alone to focus on developing his game to the maximum.
Consider that players like Aboud have to give up a lot (time with family; leaving behind friends and family; giving up college; not to mention the early financial sacrifices his family made when he was little). Therefore, athletes like him deserve some understanding, benefit of the doubt, and compassion.
Otherwise, don’t expect our athletes to do well.
Finally, tennis players only have narrow windows to try to get to higher levels in the sport. For Aboud, recent injuries meant that he had to be very careful with his scheduling. Recent strong results in Spain and in an ongoing Challenger in Bahrain suggest that his reasoning was 100% sound.
And a more important point: in tennis, national representation occurs at the individual professional level, not just in Davis Cup. For why else was there such a fuss about the flags next to a player’s name at the Australian Open? (I am thinking here of the decision to strip Russian players of the right to play under their national flag due to the war in Ukraine: regardless of the merits of that decision, it symbolizes the enormous international significance of the flag that is attached to a player’s name in individual events).
Effectively, Shelbayh is representing Jordan every other week or so year in, year out. He is, as the ATP has said, “the pride of his nation.”
And he should be.
For there is no doubt that the biggest honor a nation can achieve in tennis is if one of its sons or daughters competes at the higher levels of ATP/WTA competition.
And, as if that is not enough, he is doing a great job at it.
Finally, with regard to the Davis Cup, I am sure he will play in the future and will do so with pride and in style.
And when Abedallah finishes playing tennis, no TV commentator in Britain or elsewhere will be able to deny that Jordan has a tennis pedigree.
