| Ismail El Shafei is arguably the greatest tennis player Egypt has ever seen |
| By Rana Kamaly |
| Infootball, all names shine bright, but in tennis few names ever make it past the net to the public eye. Among them: Ismail El Shafei, Egypt’s first and to date only true international tennis champion and a national sports legend.Active on the court in the 1970s, El Shafei is the only Egyptian player to reach the Top 40 of the Association of Tennis Professionals’ (ATP) ranking history. He is also one of only four players in the world to ever beat the legendary Bjorn Borg at Wimbledon, handing the number-one ranked Swede an upset in the third round of the 1974 tournament. At the age of six, El Shafei held a wooden tennis racket for the first time and instantly fell in love with the court and the sound of the ball hitting the racket. The boy showed a talent for the game at a very young age, a talent that his father Adly El Shafei, a tennis champ in Egypt, recognized and nurtured as his son’s coach. El Shafei credits his father for teaching him everything he knows about tennis and making him who he became. El Shafei was born in 1947, and although in the 1950s six was very young to be involved seriously in sports, his passion paid off. When he was 15, he won Egypt’s national men’s tournament. In 1964, El Shafei won the boys singles championship at Wimbledon, one of the oldest and most prestigious gatherings in tennis and one of the four Grand Slam tournaments. To date, he is the only Egyptian and Arab ever to win at Wimbledon. While many parents push their kids to train and to be better, El Shafei says he “didn’t need someone to push me to be better or to train. I train because I want to be better, because I want to do better the following day. Part of the talent means the power of giving and the love of giving.” After graduating from Cairo University’s faculty of economics and political science in 1968, El Shafei started playing tennis professionally on the international circuit, a career that lasted until 1981. At the time, the cost of living was less expensive, so he traveled on his own expense. The downside was that he had no professional support in Egypt. “I was on my own, there was no team or partners to travel with me, and so I had to fit in with other players [from other countries], as I was one of a kind,” El Shafei recalls. “All the other teams came together in groups. I became friends with Brian Fairlie from New Zealand, and we spent eight years playing doubles and traveling together.” Life on the road may sound exciting, but “it is not easy,” El Shafei recalls. “The life of an athlete is tough, although it might look glamorous from the outside […]. Every week we were in a different city in a different hotel, on a different court, in a different environment. You have to have the power, the will and a strong personality to survive and to be able to accomplish something.” He recalls one tournament where a blizzard had halted all transportation in the city. “I had to run four kilometers through the ice and freezing weather to reach the courts. I had to start my journey to the court three hours before my match, so that I would have time to take a warm shower and do my warm-up exercises before playing.” He often went without rest and routine on his quest to win tournaments. Once in a Taiwan tournament, there was only one court available, with the matches scheduled from 9am to midnight. The 32 players had to reserve the court for practice sessions between midnight to 9am. “Sometimes I had to train at 3am, so I woke up at 2:30 in the morning to warm up and play my hour, then go back to sleep because I had a match at noon. “That’s how tough it is,” El Shafei continues. “I used to play 30 tournaments a year, for 15 years.” He was joined on the road by his wife Nosha El Shafei in 1970. Nosha says the life of an athlete’s wife had its own challenges. “I used to travel with him every week, and we had to move from country to country for his tournaments. He had special needs: He needed to sleep early with no noise, so I had to shut my mouth and not argue. I had to respect his needs, putting aside mine,” she recalls. “It’s very hard to be a champion; he needs special food, a program and living style. We had to give up many things like time, pleasures and the comfort of a stable home. I had to be behind him and cheer for him all the time. “Our first daughter Dina was amazing and we took her along everywhere. But with our second son Adly we couldn’t. Adly was very active and noisy and Ismail’s life couldn’t tolerate it.” Nosha says, laughing. “Once we had to sleep in the bathroom because Ismail couldn’t sleep with Adly’s noise. So I had a choice: either the bathroom or the freezing garden. I had no choice — he had a match. And later on we had our third son, Shaher.” “I left them behind in Egypt many times,” El Shafei says of his family. “I felt really bad leaving them, but you don’t get everything in life, and that was the price I had to pay.” The couple’s three children all play tennis, but none of them chose to do it professionally. “None wanted to sacrifice the pleasures of a normal life to be a pro,” Nosha explains. “This is something you have to be born with.” Their five grandchildren also play tennis and Ismail and Nosha have faith that at least one of them will become professional. The youngest grandchild is two years old and, according to Nosha, he is always saying, “I want to go to the tennis court. Where is the tennis racket?” El Shafei says that for every athlete to be better and achieve more, “he or she has to be fully committed to the sport. They have to set a goal and know how to reach it and know the price they have to pay to reach that goal. No goal can be reached unless you pay the price. I had to give up a lot of my time to training and put it first over friends, school and sometimes family. I also knew exactly how to put everything together to be able to succeed. Professionalism in anything need sacrifices because something will fall in the cracks. Nothing is for free.” During El Shafei’s time, players used to train each other because professional coaches and training facilities weren’t as available as they are today. There also wasn’t as much prize money as now. “Everyone was on his own, everyone and his capabilities,” El Shafei explains. When he stopped competing as a professional, El Shafei was still in love with the game, so he moved toward the management side. He joined the Egyptian Tennis Federation (ETF) and in 1996 was appointed the federation president for one year. In 2005, after the federation changed its leadership rules, he was elected ETF president for a four-year term. While the ETF rules allow a person to serve as president for two terms, El Shafei says, “I went for just one because I wasn’t satisfied with the outcomes during my presidency. I had some problems coordinating with the authorities of sports and youth, so I became a barrier. I thought someone else might be better at dealing with them and that I could help backstage. I don’t mind helping from outside the federation, I don’t have to be in it.” In 2001, El Shafei was also accepted as a member in the International Tennis Federation, the world governing body of tennis. He currently serves on the ITF’s Board of Directors and is chairman of the Coaches Commission. The tennis champ is a firm believer in the Arab proverb that says, “The well being of the mind is in the well being of the body.” But it needs to be more than just words. “Sports has became a luxury — not everyone can afford it because it is expensive and not available for everyone,” El Shafei says. “We have to know that sports have a very important value in our lives, which is not the common concept in Egypt.” |
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