Tennis is not even close to the top of the list of the most popular sports in Africa, with football, predictably, ranking first. One of the numerous reasons why Africa presently has no recognized continental representatives throughout the world is sports federations' unwillingness to fund or promote sports like tennis that have acquired little or no significance.
Although the African continent's regulatory body of tennis, the Confederation of African Tennis (CAT), a non-profit private organization headquartered in Tunis, Tunisia's capital, has taken on the duty of regulating tennis, its privatization has undoubtedly been a significant setback. Africa has had significant representatives in the sport for many decades, but their imminence or pertinence has likely kept them in the shadows.
The top ten African tennis players who have dominated at any time in their careers are listed below.
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10. Nduka Odizor
Odizor is a Nigerian former professional tennis player. He has seven career doubles championships and just one singles title, which he won in Taipei, Taiwan in 1983.
In June 1984, the right-handed tennis player reached his best singles rating of world number 52, and in August 1984, he reached his highest doubles ranking of world number 20.
9. Yahiya Doumbia
Doumbia is a former Senegalese professional tennis player. He began his professional career at the age of 23 and won his first singles championship at the Lyon Open only two years later when he was ranked 453rd in the world.
He won his second championship at the Bordeaux Open in 1995, which was his last win. In September 1988, he reached his career-high of world number 74, after which he retired at the age of 34 in 1997.
8. Ismail El Shafei
Ismail El Shafei was born in Egypt in November 1947 and is a formal men's professional tennis player. As a lefty, he became a professional player at the age of 21. He began his tennis career in the Egyptian championships, and instead of West Germany, he reached his first international event final in 1963, losing to Germany's Harald Elschenbroich. In 1966, El Shafei won his first senior event in Costa Rica, and he also won the Egyptian Open three times in Cairo.
He was also the first and only Egyptian to ever finish in the top 40 in the Grand Prix/ATP rankings. He has won nine doubles championships and six singles win in his career. He has had administrative positions numerous times after his retirement in March 1983, including being elected president of the Egyptian Tennis Federation from 1994 to 1996 and 2005 to 2008. He was elected to the International Tennis Federation's board of directors in 1998 and served until 2001.
7. Cliff Drysdale
Drysdale is a former tennis player from South Africa who began playing professionally at the age of 27. He was one of the attractive 8, a group of players that signed with the newly established professional World Championship Tennis (WCT) organization.
He won five singles championships and six doubles trophies throughout his open-era career, including the 1972 US Open doubles with Roger Taylor. Before retiring in 1980, he had won a total of 23 championships in his career.
Drysdale has been an ESPN tennis pundit since the network's inception in 1979; after retiring, he became a naturalized US citizen and was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2013.
6. Bryon Black
Bryon Black is a former professional tennis player who was born on October 6, 1969, in Zimbabwe to parents Donald and Velia Black, both of whom were competitive tennis players. He began playing tennis at an early age and was able to pair with future Davis Cup players for Zimbabwe, such as Greg Rodgers and Mark Gurr, when he played for his high school team in his hometown.
He reached a career-high singles rating of world number 22 in June 1996, only two years after being world number one in doubles after winning the 1994 French Open with Jonathan Stark. He won a total of 22 doubles championships and two singles won throughout the course of his career. In 2002, he announced his retirement.
5. Kevin Curren
Kevin Curren, a former professional tennis player from South Africa, was born in Durban in 1958. Curren, like Johan Kriek, fled his nation to become an American citizen in order to escape the boycott's effects, which allowed him to build a respectable professional profile for himself.
At the age of 21, he became a professional tennis player and won his first top-level singles championship in Johannesburg in 1981.
Curren has won 14 Grand Slam doubles championships, five top-level singles trophies, and 26 doubles titles throughout his career. In 1983, he reached his best-ever rating of world number three, and he retired 10 years later in 1994. He is presently the captain of the Davis Cup squad for South Africa.
4. Bob Hewitt
Hewitt is an Australian former professional tennis player who married his South African wife Dalaille at the age of 27 and became a citizen when they both relocated to Johannesburg in 1970.
Hewitt's most notable achievement was winning all Grand slam doubles championships in men's and mixed doubles at the US Open, Wimbledon Open, Australian Open, and French Open, as well as being a key figure in South Africa's first Davis Cup victory in 1974.
Hewitt won 27 singles championships and 65 doubles trophies throughout his career, and he was rated world number six in 1967, earning him induction into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1992.
In doubles, he won nine grand slams.
3. Johan Kriek
Kriek is the founder of the Global Water Foundation, a non-profit organization founded by a former South African tennis player. He has won 14 ATP championships, including two grand slams, and is often considered the most successful African tennis player of all time. To pursue his goal of being a professional tennis player, he had to leave his nation at a period when South Africa was boycotted and excluded from the sport. In August 1982, he became a naturalized American citizen as a result of his actions.
Kriek has the world number seven singles ranking and has won eight doubles tournaments in his career. At the age of 36, he retired in 1994.
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2. Younès El Aynaoui
Morocco's Younès El Aynaoui is a former professional tennis player. El Aynaoui, a well-known personality in his country, was awarded a gold medal by King Mohammed VI, the kingdom's highest sports accolade (King of Morocco). In 1993, the right-handed tennis sensation reached his first Grand Prix singles finals, losing to Argentine opponent Guillermo Perez Roldan in Casablanca.
El Aynaoui sustained a fractured right ankle when he was 24 years old, after placing second in three tour tournaments. This put a stop to his career for a while. Following his comeback from injury, he won five Challenger Series events, propelling him up the global rankings to 49th from 444th while he was injured.
He won his first top-level singles championship in Amsterdam in 1999, and his second in Bucharest in 2001. His career peak came in 2003 when he beat world number one Lleyton Hewitt in the round of 16 to go to the quarter-finals in a memorable encounter. After numerous injury layoffs, El Aynaoui became the oldest player to hold an ATP ranking at a tournament in Bahrain in 2017 at the age of 45, and he retired shortly after.
1. Wayne Ferreira
Wayne Ferreira is a former professional tennis player who was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in September 1971. He won the junior doubles championship and was rated number one junior doubles player in the start of his career as a junior player when he played at the US Open in 1989. In the same year, he became a professional player and competed in the ATP doubles in Adelaide, which he won as his first professional championship.
In June 1992, he won his first ATP singles match at Queen's Club London, after his successive victories as a junior and professional player in the doubles category. Ferriera paired up with Amanda Coetzer to win the Hopman Cup for South Africa on African soil. Ferriera won 15 top-level singles championships and 11 top-level doubles titles throughout his career. He reached his best rating of world number 6 in singles in May 1995 and world number 9 in doubles in March 2001.
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Ferreira has competed in the men's doubles alongside current tennis star Rodger Federer in 2001, finishing in the third round. Ferreira is also one of the few players that have beaten Rodger Federer in a match. He retired in 2005 with a lifetime winning percentage of 60.8 percent.
