Younès El-Aynaoui

Younès El-Aynaoui was a Moroccan tennis player who played professionally from 1990 until his retirement in 2007. He won five singles titles during his career and achieved a career-best ranking of 14 in the world in March 2003.

El-Aynaoui started his career in Florida when he was 18. By 1993 he reached the final of his first major tournament, the Grand Prix Hassan II in Casablanca. He lost the match to Guillermo Pérez Roldán of Argentina. El-Aynaoui would win his first major title six years later at the 1999 Dutch Open where he defeated Mariano Zabaleta of Argentina.

El-Aynaoui reached the quarter-finals of Grand Slam tournaments on four occasions, twice at the Australian Open, and twice at the US Open. In the quarter-final match at the 2003 Australian Open, he faced Andy Roddick of the United States. The match went down in history as it featured the then longest fifth set in a Grand Slam tournament. Roddick won the fifth and final set 21–19, with the match lasting five hours.

El-Aynaoui competed in the singles tournament at two Olympic Games. At the 1992 Barcelona Olympics he lost his second-round match against Boris Becker. At the 2004 Athína Olympics He was knocked out in the first round, losing to Dominik Hrbatý of Slovakia.

El-Aynaoui was plagued by injury during his career, and despite several comebacks, he retired in 2017. A 2003 poll in the Moroccan newspaper “L’Economiste” named him as the nation’s leading role model for society, ahead of the country’s Prime Minister and fellow Olympian Hicham El Guerrouj.