After battling for nearly 4.5 hours, World No. 532 Kenyan tennis player Angella Okutoyi stuns No. 70 Mayar Sherif to make African Games final

Kenyan tennis prodigy Angella Okutoyi registered the biggest win of her young career by defeating Egyptian star Mayar Sherif at the ongoing African Games.

Okutoyi, who won the junior doubles title at the 2022 Wimbledon Championships, faced Sherif in the semifinal of the African Games being held in Accra, Ghana. The fourth seed, led 3-1 in the first set, only for Sherif to take it away 7-5.

The top seed looked all set to wrap up the contest in the second set with a lead of 5-2. However, Okutoyi, the highest-ranked woman from Kenya, staged an incredible comeback to win the next five games and send the contest into a decider.

Sherif again took an early 3-0 lead in the third set, but Okutoyi was able to level the deficit and force a tiebreaker. The World No. 532 won the tiebreaker to register a famous 7-5, 5-7, 7-6 (5) victory on Wednesday, March 20.

This was the first top-100 win for 20-year-old Angella Okutoyi, who is a student at Auburn University in the USA. She received a first-round bye and defeated Zambia's Naomi Chileshe, Egypt's Merna Refaat, and Morocco's Aya El Aouni before defeating Sherif.

She will now compete for the gold medal against the World No. 562 and No. 6 seed from Egypt, Lamis Elhussein. Okutoyi has also qualified for the doubles final with her partner Cynthia Cheruto at the African Games.

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Mayar Sherif is the highest-ever ranked Egyptian tennis player in the Open Era

Mayar Sherif

Mayar Sherif has been a trailblazer not only for Egyptian tennis but also for Arab and African tennis. She became the highest-ranked tennis player from her country on June 19, 2023, when she reached the World No. 31 spot on the WTA Rankings. She surpassed Ismail El-Shafei, who peaked at ATP World No. 34 in 1975.

Sherif rose to the World No. 31 spot after winning 125-level tournaments in Makarska, Croatia, and Valencia, Spain. The 27-year-old is also the first woman from Egypt to win a WTA Tour title. In 2022, she defeated Maria Sakkari in the final of the WTA 250 Emilia-Romagna Open in Parma, Italy.

However, Sherif is yet to win a match on the tour this year. She began her season at the Hobart International, where she lost to Caroline Dolehide in the first round. The Egyptian then lost to Elise Mertens at the Australian Open and Sloane Stephens at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells.