Alami, Karim

Karim Alami studied tennis at a sports school in the Nice suburb of Sofia Antipolis , and then at the Tennis Academy in Spain. At age 14, he first took part in a professional tennis tournament in his native Casablanca , defeating the second racket of Morocco Abdul-Halek Nadini ^[1] . Since 1990, Alami has become a member of the Morocco national team in the Davis Cup . In his first two matches for the national team, he won all six games (four in singles and two in doubles) against opponents from Egypt and Zimbabwe, providing his team with a transition from II to I African group. The following year, he took a place among the strongest juniors in the world: in the singles he reached the finals of the US Open and the semifinals of the French Open , and in the doubles he won the Wimbledon tournament with Greg Ruesedsky , and with the John-Laffney de Jaeger the US Open. He finished the year in second place in the youth ranking in singles and in first place in doubles ^{[2] [3]} . In 1992 , representing Morocco at the Barcelona Olympics , Alami lost in the first round to future champion Mark Ross .

The main successes of Alami in professional tennis begin in 1994 . At the very beginning of the year at the tournament in Qatar, he sensationally defeated the first racket of the world, Pete Sampras , and in March, in his homeland, in Casablanca, reached the first ATP tournament finals in his career, defeating two rivals from the first hundred in the ATP rating - Jordi Arrès and his compatriot Younes El Ainawi . In May, after reaching the semi-finals of the highest category tournament in Monte Carlo and in the third round of the Italian Open (after defeating the 22nd racket of the world by Alexander Volkov ), he first made it into the list of the hundred strongest tennis players in the world. He managed to finish the year in the first hundred of the rating, and in the Davis Cup he again led the Moroccan team to the I European-African group after victories over the teams of Egypt and Poland. The next year, the Moroccans, with the help of Alami, went even higher: having beaten the Romanian team , they got the right to participate in the playoffs of the World Group, but they lost to the French there . Alami himself in 1995 won his first title in a professional tournament, winning the ATP Challenger class competition in Tashkent , and finished for the second year in a row among the hundred best tennis players in the world.

In the spring of 1996, Alami won his first ATP tournament, becoming the first Moroccan tennis player to achieve such success ^[2] . This happened in Atlanta , where on the way to the title, he defeated the fourth racket of the world, Michael Chang , one of the best clay courts in the world. This victory brought him close to the Top-50 ranking, but he only managed to overcome this barrier in September, when he won the second ATP tournament in Palermo , defeating the strong Spaniards Carlos Moya and Francisco Clavet in the process . In the same season in Bologna, he first reached the final of the ATP tournament in doubles, and the next year he won in Marbella (Spain) his first and only ATP title in pairs. In total, in 1997 he spent 20 matches in doubles and three times went to the finals of the APR tournaments with three different partners, having risen more than a hundred places in the ranking over the season. In singles, he never managed to reach the final in the ATP tournaments, but still he had several good results, including reaching the quarter-finals of the ATP Gold class tournament in Barcelona (after defeating the fifth racket of the world by Goran Ivanishevich ) and the Italian Open . In Rosmalen , for the second time this season, he beat an opponent from the top ten in the ranking - the fourth racket of the world by Thomas Muster - and finished for the fourth consecutive year in the first hundred of the rating.

Over the next two years, Alami entered the final of the ATP tournaments in singles three times, including in Barcelona, ​​and for the first time in his career reached the third round of the Grand Slam at the Australian Open in January 1998 . In 1998, he beat the eighth racket of the world, Alex Corretha , and the next year, in the semifinals of the Barcelona tournament, Todd Martin , who held the same position in the ranking. It is possible that a serious injury prevented him from achieving the best results: a fracture of his hand in July 1998 put him out of action for three and a half months ^[2] . Nevertheless, he finished 1999 in 30th place in the ranking, and by February 2000 he had risen to the 25th position in his career.

Alami continued his performances in the Davis Cup until 2002 (although in the last two years he only played three matches in doubles), and in individual professional tournaments - until April 2003 , ending his career by appearing in tournaments in three Arab countries: Qatar, United Arab Emirates and his native Morocco. In 1999, he married, and a year later, his son Ryan was born with his wife Natalie. Later Karim Alami became a sports commentator for Al-Jazeera company and director of the Qatar Total Open women's professional tournament ^[1] , as well as a member of the board of directors of the Qatar Tennis Federation ^[4] . He is Technical Director of the Qatar Tennis Academy.

Singles (6)

Victories (2)

Defeats (4)

Doubles (4)

Victory (1)

Defeats (3)

• Profile on ATP website (eng.)

• Profile on the Davis Cup website (eng.)