Ons Jabeur Just Wants to Win

Tennis isn’t just a sport for Jabeur; it’s a way of being. “People speak in different languages; some people express themselves with writing or with making a beautiful picture. I’m an artist on the tennis court,” she says. “That’s the way I try to write my story. That’s my language of being me.”

When I speak to Jabeur via Zoom from her home in Tunis, she arrives on screen sweaty and slightly out of breath. The temperature is creeping into the 90s and she’s just finished the first of two scheduled workouts for the day. She took a beat after her Wimbledon loss, dropping out of the National Bank Open in Montreal earlier this month—“I am still recovering a bit emotionally, which is fine,” she says. But the 2023 US Open is rapidly approaching, and Jabeur is focused on clinching that still elusive history-making title.

“I always had this crazy idea that I would become a Grand Slam champion,” she says. Growing up as a young Muslim girl in Africa, “I didn’t have a lot of examples in front of me,” she says. Now she’s an example for the entire Arab world. “Arab women or men should believe that they can be one of the top players—they belong here,” Jabeur says. “You don’t have to come from France or the US or Australia to make it. You can come from a very small country in North Africa and be a champion.”

Being an Arab woman on the global sports stage is complex. “I’m Muslim, so I mean definitely people look at me differently. That really sucks,” Jabeur says. As anyone who has ever been marginalized knows, it’s never just about the job or the results. Every moment Jabeur spends in the public eye carries the weight of trying to convince the world that the truth of an entire ethnic and religious group can’t be reduced to a stereotype. “Sometimes it is very tough to prove, but maybe I will change that,” she says.

Adding to her challenge is increasing scrutiny on the role of sports in the Middle East. In recent years countries including Qatar and Saudi Arabia have spent billions to court global sports fans, drawing accusations of sportswashing, or trying to distract from human rights abuses by championing sports.

“There is no perfect country,” says Jabeur. In her view, efforts to bring sports to more women, particularly in places where their freedoms are restricted, are worthy of support. “For me, these countries are trying to change, they’re trying to do something good,” she says. “So many women are waiting for these opportunities.”

Jabeur’s perspective is undoubtedly shaped by her own experience with the liberating power of sports in a country where women enjoy fewer social and political freedoms. Growing up with two brothers, “I always fought with them like, ‘Why do they get more?’” she says.

Her mom, a “strong independent woman,” introduced her to tennis when she was three years old, and Jabeur’s view of her place in the world shifted. “The court is the place where I felt the most free. I felt like myself. Nobody could challenge me there because I knew I was very good,” she says. Girls, boys, it didn’t matter. No one was going to put a limit on her potential. “It was like, If you want to challenge me, just come on a tennis court and we will see what’s going to happen.”