February 18, 2022
Meshkat-ol-Zahra Safi has become the first Iranian male or female to win a junior grand slam match in tennis.
It is a victory the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) has hailed as a “milestone.”
Safi, 17, beat her rival Anja Nayar from Australia, the host country, 6-4, 6-3 in a match January 23.
Safi became the first Iranian player to enter the top 100 of the world junior rankings earlier this month and arrived at the Australian Open ranked No. 87. She has now risen to 74th.
In a tweet, the Australian tennis association described Safi’s win as one of the “historic milestones” of the tournament.
Safi stumbled upon tennis when she was eight years old, watching Rafael Nadal on television with her mother one day.
“In my country, if you ask which sport they like, they’ll say soccer. I remember the day I was watching television with my mother and we were watching Rafael Nadal, and we were so curious to see if there is any tennis court in Iran that we could go to just try,” she said.
“My family, they are in love with sport, especially my father; he was a soccer player when he was younger and we were really curious: ‘What is tennis? Maybe I could try this?’
“When I started tennis they said I’m talented, but I mean, I found out later what is ‘talented’ because when I see the players here [in Australia], when I see the juniors, the pros here, I can see what is ‘talented’.”
Safi trains at Optigenpro Academy in Tehran and admitted it has been a struggle figuring out a way to rise through the ranks. Besides the lack of practice partners, she says she faces great difficulty getting to tournaments, especially with no sponsors and troubles obtaining entry visas into other countries.
Despite that, Safi picked up six International Tennis Federation (ITF) junior singles titles in 2021 and hopes to compete in all four majors this season, provided she gets the necessary visas.
Growing up, it wasn’t easy watching tennis on TV but she hopes she can popularize the sport back home by continuing to rise through the ranks. “I think now I’m one of the good reasons that everybody can see tennis in my country,” she said.
“My family is a really, really big reason that I can get here, especially my mother, she was pushing me all the time to the tournaments,” she explained.
“When I started playing ITF tournaments, I was losing every single match I played. And she was just pushing me, ‘You can get better, you can get better’, and I was really practicing hard.
“I had really, really tough times to get here. About everything, about practicing, about visas, about the tournaments…. Really it was hard, for my family, for my team, to get here, but we did it.”
