Ons Jabeur eyes No. 1 ranking, joy at WTA coming to Tunisia

It was recently announced that a WTA tournament will be staged this October in Monastir, Tunisia, and I couldn’t be happier.

It’s a lot of pressure but it’s a good kind of pressure, the kind that helps you perform well in front of your home crowd. It’s great to see that we are evolving and are staging bigger tournaments in Tunisia. I’m glad the Tunisian tennis federation and my country have taken this big step. It’s also nice to see more and more tournaments staged in Africa, in general. Hopefully it’s going to be a great one. I cannot wait to invite every player to come and play and hopefully they will have a great first impression of Tunisia.

The tournament will take place in the same town that is home to the very first club I ever practiced at. It’s going to be in a hotel and they’re building a big center court with several outside courts. I do my preseason training block there every year and it’s a great place. Hopefully I’ll have a home court advantage. The crowd will be there to support me for sure.

It’s also great they are giving more importance to women’s sport. I think in Tunisia specifically, when a Tunisian woman or a man does something good, the people automatically get interested in that sport. So since they have me in tennis, they’re following tennis more and more. I know some Tunisians who have told me they previously followed Nadal and Federer and now don’t even know what the guys are doing, so now they’re just following me and following women’s tennis. This is a great thing. Hopefully people will discover more and more about women’s tennis because there really are some amazing players on the WTA tour.

I saw what Andrea Petkovic said about the WTA being a very competitive environment but that it also