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It can be difficult to truly appreciate the talent even the most mediocre professional athlete possesses when you consider there aren’t many situations that allow them to showcase their skills against a regular person. However, we were treated to one of those scenarios courtesy of an Egyptian woman who got demolished by the 1,206th-ranked player on the planet after earning a spot in a tournament she had no business competing in.
I wish I could credit the person who dreamed up an incredibly amusing proposal that springs to mind whenever the Olympics roll around: every event should feature a random competitor who gets plucked off the street so viewers can get an idea of just how they’d probably fare against the people who earned the right to represent their country.
There have been a couple of memorable moments where we got some idea of what that feature would look like if it were instituted.
The Australian breakdancer known as “Raygun” became a viral sensation after her routines netted her a grand total of zero points in Paris, and in 2018, an American named Elizabeth Swaney had a similarly underwhelming performance after scamming her way onto Hungary’s ski team before finishing dead last in the halfpipe competition.
Both of them seemed to at least grasp the rules and mechanics of the sports they competed in, but the same cannot be said for a woman from Egypt who may have never picked up a tennis racket before she found herself taking part in a tournament in Kenya.
An Egyptian woman named Hajar Abdelkader scored exactly three points in a tennis match her opponent won in 37 minutes
The International Tennis Federation is currently holding a W35 tournament with a $30,000 prize pool at Parklands Sports Club in Nairobi, Kenya. On Tuesday, Germany’s Lorena Schaedel (who currently occupies the 1,206th spot in the WTA singles rankings and the 403rd in the ITF’s) found herself facing off against a 21-year-old Egyptian named Hajar Abdelkader in the main draw.
Schaedel did not have any trouble dispatching her opponent on the clay, as she secured the win with back-to-back 6-0 sets during a match that only lasted 37 minutes. That may not seem like a big deal at first glance, but a video of the showdown went viral thanks to the virtually nonexistent set of skills Abdelkader exhibited on the court in her first-ever pro competition.
Abdelkader recorded a grand total of three points during the match, with two of them coming via double faults that Schaedel (her lone point on a return came via an unforced error the German committed in the second game of the second set). She also recorded 20 double faults of her own and repeatedly needed Schadel to tell her where to stand on the court while things were underway.
It’s not entirely clear how Abdelkader secured a spot in the tournament in the first place, but the leading theory is that she purchased a wild-card draw that allowed her to bypass the qualifiers where a player of that caliber would normally be sniffed out.
Schaedel, on the other hand, finished with 13 aces and earned the right to face off against China’s Ren Yufei in the next round.