When Mayar Sherif kicked off her 2019 season at a W15 ITF World Tennis Tour tournament in the Red Sea city of Sharm El Sheikh last January, the Egyptian was unranked and hadn’t played a professional event in 15 months.

The Cairo native had just graduated with a degree in sports medicine from Pepperdine University, where she became just the fourth woman in the school’s history to reach the semi-finals of the NCAA Championship last year.

Eager to kick-start her pro career, Sherif took to the court immediately after graduation, without a coach, without a proper training block beforehand, and with a dodgy shoulder that was finally on the mend following a five-month injury. 

She felt out of shape, and lost early in her first three tournaments.

But that proved to be just the prelude to a history-making season, in which she became the highest-ranked Egyptian woman ever, was crowned African champion to virtually book a spot at next year’s Olympic Games – provided she stays ranked in the top-300 by June 8, 2020 – and amassed more than 70 match-wins within a span of 10 months.

In total, Sherif scooped six ITF World Tennis Tour titles in 2019, and ended the season as one of just three women to have started the year unranked, and finished it in the top-200 of the world rankings.

After making her first semi-final at W60 Colina in Chile last month, Sherif rose to a career-high ranking of No.189, which earned her a place in her first Grand Slam qualifying draw at the upcoming Australian Open.

Even more remarkable was the 26-match winning streak she enjoyed from the end of April to the beginning of July. She won 45 sets in a row during that stretch.  

“You know when you feel hungry? Hungry for matches, hungry to reach a certain level, you want to win; I was in a state of hunger,” Sherif reflects on her record-setting year.

Her ascent this year may seem like it came out of nowhere, but the Egyptian was confident in her abilities, even when she was losing at W15s early on. She reunited with a former coach of hers, Justo Gonzalez, who worked with her when she was still a young teen at Juan Carlos Ferrero’s academy in Alicante. They officially restarted their partnership in April, which is when her roll began.

“I was expecting that I would reach where I am now, and that I would do even better, but I didn’t expect it to happen so fast,” confessed Sherif.

“When I started in January, I was overweight, I wasn’t muscular and my shoulders were weak since I was coming back from an injury. I had a two-week training block in Spain then I played Fed Cup in Montenegro and we managed to get Egypt promoted to Group II. Then I had two events in Egypt. I lost in the first tournament to a player; my coach told me I believe in you 100 per cent, and the girl you just lost to, you should beat her 6-2 6-3.

“I was thinking, ‘How am I losing these matches?’ There was confusion, I was losing in W15 tournaments. I played her in my next tournament and beat her 6-2 6-1, then won my semi-final 6-2 6-2 and the final was something similar. And from then on, that’s when the winning streak started.

“Everything happened so fast. Once I got in shape – the tennis was there, I just had to get in shape, and I had to get some confidence, some belief, and then I flew.”

Sherif’s path to the pros wasn’t a typical one. She started playing tennis at the age of four, alongside her sister Rana, who is two years her senior (her other two sisters played tennis too). Unlike most players in Egypt, she didn’t emerge from a specific club; her parents would take her and Rana from one court to another across Cairo searching for good training conditions, until she went to Spain for a year when she was 15.

She couldn’t afford to stay there too long, and saw college tennis as “the smartest option” moving forward. She first joined Rana at Fresno State, then switched to Pepperdine two years later, hoping to face a higher level of competition by taking on better teams. Her rapid rise this season takes her closer to where she believes she belongs, and she’s now dreaming of making a significant impact on the tennis scene back in Egypt.

“I see that in Egypt we have lots of talent but we don’t have resources. The boys and girls come up playing really well, but because of the lack of competition and the lack of resources and sponsors, all of this stuff means these young talents don’t end up making it. But the talent is there,” she says.

“With some money and everything else, we can create top players. My dream is to make it, and earn money, and with that money, I can help other Egyptians breakthrough.”

For now, Sherif can find solace in the fact that she is already inspiring many Egyptians with every new milestone she hits. When she went to Rabat in August to fight for a possible place at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, she was the favourite for the gold medal, and had all the pressure on her shoulders. She suffered an infection and played the whole tournament on antibiotics, but still managed to top the podium.

No Egyptian tennis player has ever competed at the Olympic Games, and Sherif – along with her compatriot Mohamed Safwat who won the men’s singles in Rabat – has the opportunity to end that drought next summer.

“It was a good experience. The final [against South Africa’s Chanel Simmonds] was very, very tough mentally, I was up 5-0 in the second set and I had one game to close it out, it hit me mentally. So it was a good experience to learn how to close out matches like that in situations like that,” she says of her African Games journey.

“I went to Morocco knowing I have to win. And that’s a kind of pressure. I knew I was the best player there and am expected to win. So to play with this kind of pressure, with so much on the line, Olympics and history, it was a different thing that I’ve never experienced and it’s good that I experienced it to learn how to play with that kind of pressure.”

Sherif sounds bullish when discussing her own accomplishments and future goals. Growing up, she was inspired by Belgian four-time Grand Slam champion Kim Clijsters but she doesn’t allow herself to idolise any of the current players on tour.

“It’s tough for me to look at a player now and say she’s my idol, I would never say that because I see myself as someone who could play them and beat them,” she adds.

“But someone that I see as a very intelligent player, and plays very well, is [reigning US Open champion] Bianca Andreescu. She plays differently than other players, she’s clever, I like her game.”

While many can be content with setting records for their country, Sherif’s outlook is far beyond that. She’s aware that she has gone farther than any other Egyptian woman has in the sport, but that’s far from being enough for her.

“It’s something I’m proud of, it’s always going to be in my books, but I’m still hungry and I want to go higher and higher,” she said. “I know what the level is like abroad, and I know that top-200 is nothing. Maybe because in Egypt, we don’t have anyone who has done this before, that’s why the reaction was big. But I know I can go much higher than top-200 and it’s still a long way to go, and I have the goal to go higher and higher.”