After an explosive finish with a match between father and son, Dr. Zuhair Fayez and Badr Z. Fayez, 2014 ZFP Tennis Tournament came to an end last April 24, 2014. Badr reigned as the new Class A tennis champion after beating Dr. Zuhair in a tough finals match. For Class B, Tamer Saeed emerged victorious over Dande Mamano in the Class B finals. For Class C, Mounir Bekkali triumphed over Abdulraheem Mohamed and earned his place as the Class C champion. The tournament lasted for 4 months.
During the early parts of the tournament when Class C was left with the top 16 players, some players requested a draw to determine the matchups. Sports Coordinator, Iftikhar Javed honored the request and the matchups were changed.
Out of 16 players, Hossam Rabie, Mohamed Fawzi, Abdulraheem Mohamed, and Mounir Bekkali reached the semifinals. Abdulraheem beat Fawzi in a surprising turn of events even after Fawzi earned a huge lead over Abdulraheem in the final set. Mounir Bekkali won his semifinals match after beating Hossam Rabie who struggled to find his momentum. Mounir and Abdulraheem had similar defensive playstyles but Mounir managed to come out on top in the finals to earn his title as 2014’s Class C champion.
For Class B, Tamer Saeed was nigh unbeatable during the round robin stage of the tournament followed by Dande Mamano whose only loss was from Tamer. Balsam Hamid managed to earn his place in the semifinals with enough wins to earn rank 3 but the position of rank 4 was being fought by 3 other players. Chuck Lizen, however, managed to get the win that he needed to earn 4th place in the round robin. Tamer and Dande managed to beat their opponents in the semifinals but similar to their previous match, Tamer still managed to come out on top after three hard-fought sets, earning him the Class B champion title.
For Class A, Dr. Zuhair Fayez managed to win all his matches in his group for the round robin, an amazing feat seeing that the players in Class A are ZFP’s strongest tennis players. On the other hand, Badr Z. Fayez also dominated in his group and quickly reached the rank 1 position, earning his place in the semifinals. Dr. Zuhair and Badr defeated their respective opponents in the semifinal matches and moved on to the finals.
The Class A finals was spectacular to watch since both finalists are very strong players in their own right. Dr. Zuhair managed to apply a lot of pressure on Badr, who had to keep running back and forth to return the ball. Badr, however, still managed to overcome this and won in two sets to become the Class A Champion.
Congratulations to our winners and we hope to see everyone again for another great tennis tournament next year!