Moez Echargui on realising Olympic dream, meeting his hero and making Tunisia proud

Most aspiring tennis players grow up dreaming of making it to one of the four grand slams or competing in the tour’s other big events like the Masters 1000s in Indian Wells or Rome or Monte Carlo.

The Olympics is not necessarily the first item on a tennis player’s bucket list but when the opportunity comes around to join the best athletes on the planet and fight for a medal for your country, perspective shifts fast and the Games become the most important event on your calendar.

That’s been the case for Tunisia’s Moez Echargui, who at 31 years old, has qualified for his first Olympics and is getting ready for what will arguably be the highlight of his career in Paris this summer.

Currently ranked 342 in the world, Echargui punched his ticket to Paris by clinching gold at the African Games in Accra, Ghana, two months ago. He only got the call to go to Accra two weeks prior to the event and hadn’t put too much thought into it going in.

He then proceeded to win six consecutive matches, knocking out Egypt's veteran Olympian Mohamed Safwat in the semi-finals and Zimbabwe’s Benjamin Lock in the gold medal match, to officially qualify for the Olympics.

“Everything happened so fast, so I didn't really expect it,” Echargui told The National in an interview via Zoom.

“To be honest, I never thought about it, like even when I started in tennis. The Olympics for tennis, it seems like a really long way to get there. It’s played once every four years and I never had the idea to qualify or to be at the Olympics because for us as tennis players we have other tournaments to be goals, like the Slams or the Masters. Those are the main objectives to get there. But the Olympics, I feel like it's a whole other sphere.”

Those feelings quickly