Tuesday, January 17, 2012

PSG win Al Kass U-17 title



PSG won the inaugural Al Kass U-17 Cup title after a 5-4 penalty shootout victory over Juventus of Italy.

http://www.aljazeerasport.net/news/football/2012/01/2012117212951787106.html

Friday, January 13, 2012

PSG Drew With Barcelona


PSG and Barcelona played out and entertaining 2-2 draw in the group stage of the 2012 Al Kass U-17 Cup in Doha. More details in the following news report.

http://www.aljazeerasport.net/news/football/2012/01/2012112223541566912.html

Friday, January 6, 2012

All French Final in Doha



The 2012 Qatar ExxonMobil Open will be an all-French affair between Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Gael Monfils. The semi-finals report.

http://www.aljazeerasport.net/news/tennis/2012/01/201216174952381600.html

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Promoting Paralympic Sports in Qatar


An inteview with Amir Al Mulla, Executive Director of the Qatar Paralympic Committee during Qatar ExxonMobil Open. Al Mulla talked about the future of Paralympic sports in Qatar and the role of media in promoting them. (Arabic Language)

http://www.aljazeerasport.net/news/others/2012/01/201218204237963435.html

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Qatar Exxon Mobil Open Stats & Figures


Herre is a translation of an Arabic language statistical feature that was published on Al Jazeera Sport Website in Arabic Language on January 1st, 2012

Link for the original Arabic language feature (http://www.aljazeerasport.net/news/tennis/2012/01/201211161947533131.html)

Players with most appearances in the main draw (Singles)

13 appearances – Younis Al Aynaoui (Morocco)
9 –
Karim Alami (Morocco), Fabrice Santoro (France) & Sultan Khalfan (Qatar)
8 – Nikolay Davydenko (Russia), Hicham Arazi (Morocco), Mikhail Youzhny (Russia) & Javier Sanchez (Spain)

Players with highest number of matches

34 matches – Younis Al Aynaoui (Morocco) / in 13 participations
28 – Nikolay Davydenko (Russia) / in 8 participations
26 – Roger Federer (Switzerland) / in 6 participations
23 – Fabrice Santoro (France) / in 9 participations
20 – Goran Ivanisevic (Croatia) / in 7 participations

Players with most wins

23 wins – Roger Federer (Switzerland) in 26 matches
22 – Younis Al Aynaoui (Morocco) in 34 matches
21 – Nikolay Davydenko (Russia) in 28 matches
16 – Ivan Ljubicic (Croatia) in 19 matches (inc. 1 W/O)
15 – Fabrice Santoro (France) in 23 matches

Undefeated

1997 Champion, Jim Courier (USA) and 2001 Champion Marcelo Rios (Chile), both won the title in their only appearance in Doha, obviously winning all their 5 matches.

The Final

25 players reached the final of Qatar ExxonMobil Open since its first edition in 1993, only 14 of them won the 19 titles.

Matches

31 matches were played every year in the main draw.

Since 1993, 589 had been played; the 600th match in the history of the tournament will be in this year’s first round.

577 matches were completed, nine ended in the retirement of one of the players, and three with Walkover (W/O).

The Top 8 Seeds

1995 saw the worst performance by the top 8 seeds, as five of them were knocked out of the first round.

In 2011, all of the top 8 seeds were able to get past the first round, for the first time in the history of the tournament.

2001 was the only year with no player from the top 8 seeds reaching the semifinals.

In the past three editions (2009-2010-2011), only seeded players reached the semifinals.

Only in the first edition 1993 and last year’s edition, the top four seeds reached the semifinals.

First Seed

The 1st seed was able to win the title in Doha, only on three occasions, Roger Federer (Switzerland) did it during his back-to-back wins (2005-2006) when he was also World No.1.

Stefan Edberg (Sweden) also won the title as 1st seed in 1995. He was 7th in the world rankings at that time.

Tim Henman (UK) was the 1st seed in the 1999 edition, but he lost in the final to German qualifier Rainer Schuttler.

The worst performance of the top seed came in the 1994 edition, when Pete Sampras (USA) was knocked out in the first round by qualifier Karim Alami (Morocco) who was making his tournament debut.

Alami went on to make eight more appearances in the tournament, reaching the semifinals in 1999. He is now the tournament’s director.

QualifiersGerman Rainer Schuttler caused the biggest shock in the tournament’s history when he clinched the title 1999, to become the first ever champion to come through the qualifying stages.

It was the German’s first ever ATP Tour title, and at 22, he was also the youngest ever winner. Schuttler was also the lowest ever ranked champion in the history of the tournament, 124th.

Wild Cards

The best ever result achieved by a “Wild Card” player, came in 2004 when Nicolas Escude (France), 114th in the world rankings, defeated Ivan Ljubicic (Croatia) in the Final to win the 4th and final ATP singles title in his career.

Younis Al Aynaoui (Morocco) got a “Wild Card” in 1996 and reached the final after knocking out top seed Thomas Muster (Austria) and 3rd seed Thomas Enqvist (Sweden), but he then lost to unseeded Petr Korda (Czech) in a match that saw two tie-breaks.

Champions

In 12 of the 19 Qatar ExxonMobil Open editions, the winner came from the top three seeds (63 %), while, in 14 editions the winner came from the top 8 seeds (73 %).

Players by continent

Since the first edition, 265 players took part in the main draw; obviously, most of them from Europe.

Europe – 200 Players (83 %)
South America – 13
North America – 11
Asia – 11
Africa – 9
Oceania – 1

By Country

35 players from Spain took part in Qatar ExxonMobil Open main draw since 1993, but no one of them ever won the title.

Spain – 35 Players
Germany – 25
France – 25
Sweden – 18
Italy – 16

While only one player represented each of the following 15 countries: Armenia, Australia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Finland, Haiti, Hungary, Japan, Latvia, South Korea, Norway, Luxemburg, Portugal, Uzbekistan and Venezuela.

Arab Players

11 Arab players who had the privilege of taking part in the main draw of Qatar ExxonMobil Open.

4 – Qatar (Nasser Al Khelaifi, Sultan Khalfan, Abdualah Hajji and Mohamed Abduallah)
4 – Morocco (Younis Al Aynaoui, Karim Alami, Hicham Arazi and Reda Al Amrani)
3 – Egypt (Tamer Al Sawy, Karim Maamoun and Sherif Sabry)

Info related to the 2012 edition

Out of the 32 players who are taking part in the 1st round of this year’s edition, we have eleven players making their debut.

Malek Jaziri (Tunisia) – the 1st ever Tunisian in the main draw
Jabr Al Mutawa (Qatar) – the 5th Qatari in history & only 17-years-old
Flavio Cipolla (Italy)
Igor Kunitsyn (Russia)
Alec Bogomolov jr. (Russia)
Albert Ramos (Spain)
Pablo Andujar (Spain)
Rui Machado (Portugal)
Roberto Bautista-Agut (Spain)
Grega Zemlja (Slovenia)
Matthias Bachinger (Germany)

and two former winners, Roger Federer (Switzerland) & Nikolay Davydenko (Russia).

Two former finalists, Rafael Nadal (Spain) & Gael Monfils (France).

Four former semifinalists, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (France), Mikhail Youzhny (Russia), Victor Troicki (Serbia) & Filippo Volandri (Italy).

Also Davydenko and Youzhny will be making their 9th appearance in the tournament.