Yasmine Kabbaj beat Berfu Cengiz 7-6, 6-3 in the first round of the Grand Prix SAR La Princesse Lalla Meryem in Rabat on Tuesday, becoming the first Moroccan player to win a match on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz since 2011.
The 22-year-old from Morocco also became the fourth Moroccan woman to win a tour-level match in the Open Era, a breakthrough that came a year after she made her WTA main-draw debut as a wild card at Rabat in 2024. Kabbaj, ranked No. 334, needed the opening set tiebreak to settle the match before pulling away in the second.
Her win carried extra weight because Morocco had not seen a woman win a WTA Tour match since Nadia Lalami reached the Fès quarterfinals in 2011. Kabbaj had already shown she could handle bigger moments last month, when she beat Diane Parry in the first round in Saint-Malo for her first career Top 100 victory.
Rabat produced another national first on Tuesday when Sada Nahimana beat Ajla Tomljanovic 6-3, 7-5 to become the first Burundian to defeat a Top 100 player. Nahimana also became the first Burundian to win a tour-level match in 2025 after defeating Aya El Aouni to reach the second round, and she arrived in Morocco ranked No. 231 after a strong run through finals in Bujumbura and Platja d’Aro and a semifinal in Zagreb over the previous two months.
The tournament also produced a comeback from Yelyzaveta Kotliar, who beat Francesca Jones 2-6, 6-3, 6-4 in 2 hours and 20 minutes after trailing 4-0 in the third set. Kotliar was ranked No. 528 at the time, a reminder that Rabat has become a place where long droughts can end fast and rankings can be upended in a single afternoon.
For Kabbaj, the result answers a question Moroccan tennis had carried for more than a decade: the wait is over, and the next local win is no longer a memory from 2011 but a fresh result in Rabat.
