Yasmine Kabbaj Ends Morocco's 15-Year WTA Drought — Daria Snigur
Yasmine Kabbaj ended Morocco's long wait on Tuesday, beating Berfu Cengiz 7-6, 6-3 in the first round in Rabat. The Moroccan wild card became the first player from her country to win a match on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz since 2011, and the result also pushed her into a small piece of national history.
Kabbaj in Rabat
Kabbaj, ranked No. 334, handled the opening set in a tiebreak before closing out the match 6-3. She is now the fourth Moroccan woman to win a tour-level match in the Open Era.
The win also fits into a sharper rise for the 2024 Rabat wild card. Last month, she beat Diane Parry in the Saint-Malo WTA 125 first round for her first career Top 100 victory, and her career high remains No. 331. Tuesday's result added a bigger line to that progress: the first Moroccan WTA match win since 2011.
Rabat's other milestones
The same session produced two more firsts. Sada Nahimana beat Ajla Tomljanovic 6-3, 7-5 to become the first Burundian to score a victory over an opponent ranked in the Top 100, while Yelyzaveta Kotliar came back from 4-0 down in the third set to defeat Francesca Jones 2-6, 6-3, 6-4 in 2 hours and 20 minutes.
Nahimana, ranked No. 231, had already become the first player from Burundi to compete in a WTA main draw in Rabat in 2023, and she reached the second round after adding another tour-level win in 2025. Kotliar, 19 and ranked No. 528, turned a one-sided start in the final set into the comeback of the day.
For Kabbaj, the immediate change is simple: one Rabat win now carries national weight. It moved her from a first-round wild card into the same conversation as the few Moroccan women who have won at tour level, with the 2011 marker now gone from the record as the last such victory.
Morocco's Open Era marker
The bigger number is the one that sits behind the scoreline. Kabbaj is only the fourth Moroccan woman to win a tour-level match in the Open Era, and Nadia Lalami's Fès quarterfinal run in 2011 was the most recent comparable result before this week. Rabat changed that record in one match.
Her next step is already clear on the court: carry the same ranking into the rest of the event and try to make this first Moroccan WTA Tour win since 2011 the start of a deeper run rather than the line that gets remembered by itself.
