Mayar Sherif: My first Wimbledon has been special and my game is adapting well to grass

This is my first time at Wimbledon since I played the juniors here back in 2012.

I don’t remember much from my first time at the All England Club except for one funny story. I was 15 years old at the time, playing doubles with Indonesian player Aldila Sutjiadi, and we almost gave our opponents a walkover. I was sitting with Mai El Kamash, an Egyptian friend, and watching Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic play their quarter-final matches, and I was enjoying myself so much that I forgot about the doubles!

I then got a call and had to run to my match. I made sure that I was so active in the match, and we won the first set so I felt a little bit better about being late. That’s the only thing I remember!

Wimbledon is very unique, but I didn’t know how unique it was until I actually arrived here. It’s very special. The decorations, the tradition, how the people are dressed, how everything is so clean, so perfect, how everything is branded with the Wimbledon logo; the grass is just perfect, it’s unbelievable. The tunnels that take you everywhere, everything just goes together so perfectly. Every detail is taken care of, even the flowers are immaculate and are purple and white, like the Wimbledon colours.

They get our laundry done in two hours here, which is fascinating. I was shocked by how fast they get it done, this is the only tournament I’ve ever experienced that before. Also every player’s locker in the locker room has the Wimbledon sign, it’s purple, white and green, everything matches.

I’ve really been enjoying myself a lot.

Like most players here, we rented a house together in Wimbledon. It’s very nice because I feel like we’re a family with my team; we eat together, we cook – my sister is the one mostly doing the cooking but I cook sometimes. We eat together on one table, we talk, we’re in the living room at night chatting, so it feels like you’re at home and not stuck in a hotel room. You get the feeling of being one team and you have this great support system; you get that a lot more than if you’re in a hotel.

This is the first time my dad has come to one of my tournaments on tour and he’s so happy to be here. The other day, my sister Rana was like, ‘Come dad, let’s see London’, and he said, ‘No, no, I didn’t come here to see London, I came to stay here at the tennis, I’m going to spend all day with Mayar’. He’s really enjoying himself.

I obviously have lots of experience on clay and this was my first time playing the grass season on the professional circuit, so coming into this grass swing, I had some doubts: I don’t know what to expect from myself.

I was coming off winning many matches on clay, lifting back-to-back titles in Makarska and Valencia, then transitioning to grass – it’s the first time I’d done that transition. Even my tennis coach Justo, it’s the first time for him to do it, and same goes for my fitness coach, so we didn’t know what to expect. To be honest we took a very good experience from the singles – losing a very close match to Rebeka Masarova in a super-tiebreak – and let’s see if we can do better in doubles, where I’ll be playing with Germany’s Anna-Lena Friedsam.

We changed a lot of things in my game to adapt to the grass. If you see me play on grass and you see me play on clay, it’s totally different. I think that in itself is a success in a way, because I was able to change and find solutions, with the tools that I have, to be able to play on this surface, with a new racquet as well. And that was very challenging.

I’m happy to say that I feel like I finally found a way to be consistent. I found a system that works on grass that I didn’t have before. Obviously, we’ve been practising a lot on the slices, the feel at the net, because those are weapons that I could use here and maybe I can’t use that much on clay since the points go longer. All in all we’re happy. My coaches were just telling me they are very happy with the way I played.

I feel like grass is definitely a surface I can do well on in the future because I have a big serve, and I have good hands, good volleys, good drop shots, and a good backhand on this surface. I can hit the backhand pretty flat and I can hit it both ways. The only thing that would bother me more than with other shots is when the ball bounces so low to my forehand. But still I can manage that well with the slices, so I use the hand to compensate for that and I feel that maybe in the future I can even find better solutions.

This is only my first time and I’m sure I will come here next year with much higher confidence.

* Egyptian world No 31 Mayar Sherif was talking to Reem Abulleil at The All England Club where she made her Wimbledon debut and was seeded at a Grand Slam for the first time.

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