Less than a year ago, Shoug Alaseeri participated in her first competitive padel tennis tournament.
Now, she’s ranked second amongst women players in Bahrain, is a member of the national team and eyeing the international arena.
“Things have happened so quickly over the past year that, honestly, everything in my memory is a bit of blur,” Alaseeri, 28, told the GDN in an exclusive interview. “I mean, I only played padel tennis for the first time ever in the summer of 2021.
“Now, I’m in the national team and ranked second in the kingdom! It’s a bit hard for me to believe, sometimes, but it really has happened and it’s absolutely great.”
It all started with a random game of padel – considered one of the fastest-growing sports in the world – at her husband’s urging nearly a year and a half ago.
“My husband, Mohammed, is a pretty good player,” Alaseeri said. “He asked me to come along for a casual game with friends and I agreed.
“I hadn’t, initially, been really interested in this sport. My first love was, and is, football – I played as a midfielder for 15 years for various private clubs.
“But that first game of padel, which I participated in just for fun, did the trick. I was hooked!”
The interior design graduate from Kingdom University played more padel over the next few months and discovered that she had a natural flair for the game.
“I suppose all the years I had spent playing football helped,” Alaseeri explained. “Football requires stamina, flexibility and footwork. All those attributes came into focus as I started playing more games of padel.
“The sport began to grow on me. In the beginning, I thought of it more as a social sport – I played in friendly games with my husband and friends.
“But, as time went by and I discovered I was actually getting pretty good at it, I wanted to try and play competitively.”
Buoyed by the support she received from her husband and family, Alaseeri finally took part in her first proper tournament last May.
“Before that, as I said, I thought of the sport as just a fun activity to do,” she said. “But when I and my partner – padel is played in the doubles format – reached the final of my very first tournament, I thought I could seriously make a go at playing more competitive tournaments.”
By the end of 2022, Alaseeri had participated in more than half-a-dozen tournaments across the kingdom with last December bringing her the joy of her first-ever title win in the Pink Padel tournament.
“That was quite an experience,” she laughed. “Especially since I returned to Bahrain from Barcelona – where Mohammed and I had gone for a week’s training at the Aurial Padel Cornella academy – literally a day before the start of that tournament.
Alaseeri partnered with Anna Pribylova, a former Russian tennis pro who now coaches both tennis and padel players in Bahrain, for the Pink Padel competition where they defeated the duo of Miriam Alammadi and Dalal Malalla, 6-4, 6-3, in the final.
“Anna and I have been friends for a while so it was a pleasure to play alongside her,” Alaseeri said. “And she brought all her experience from the international tennis professional circuit to bear during the tournament, which helped me immensely.
“I remember that she was a wonderful calming influence on me, especially during the final when I was, understandably, a little nervous. She taught me ways to relax, control my nervousness and push through the game.”
Husband, Mohammed, was in the stands along with her family, Alaseeri added, with many friends also glued to the video feed being live-streamed around the world.
“Having Mohammed and my family around to witness my first tournament win was very special,” Alaseeri exclaimed. “And it felt so good to learn afterwards from so many friends that they’d been watching online and cheering me on.”
Alaseeri’s ambitions for the game had received a boost a couple of months prior to her Pink Padel tournament triumph when she learnt she had been called up to the national team in October.
“Someone from the Bahrain Padel Federation (BPF) scouted me,” she explained. “And it is such an honour to be one of the ten women currently in the squad.
“It’s changed everything for me. We train three times a week under the watchful eye of the BPF coaches, have to follow a certain diet and focus on our fitness during the practice drills as well. So it’s a lot of positives.”
With more women in Bahrain taking up the sport, Alaseeri thinks the female padel game will go from strength to strength in the country.
“Things have been evolving extremely rapidly on the women-in-padel front in the kingdom,” she said. “There is still a big gap between top-tier players and the rest but, with more women getting involved and taking the sport seriously, the game will benefit immensely.”
Meanwhile, having tasted success with her first tournament win in late December, Alaseeri is focused on improving her game further and intends to test herself against the best in the international arena whenever the opportunity comes around.
“I really want to see how far I can go as a competitive padel player,” she asserted. “I have the drive in me to get better and better and, hopefully, compete in international tournaments outside Bahrain. And, hopefully, win them too!”
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