Muhammad Zaryab Khan

When I was very young, I was fond of sports. I used to watch and play a lot of sports. When i was 7 years old, i used to play badminton with my father. Once i was on my badminton practice, a guy there brought his tennis racket, i really liked the shape and size of the racket as it was big and heavy. I wanted to play with that one. I told my father about it and he bought a used racket for me as we didn't know a lot about this sport. When i was 8 in 2012, i played tennis for the first time, and that too with my father. I just used to play it for fun and never thought of continuing it professionally. When i turned 9 in 2013, we moved away from that city to a small town, and there were no courts. I just stopped playing it for almost four years. In 2017, when i was 14 years old, my father used to teach maths, and one of his students was the son of an Army Officer. That Army officer helped to get permission to play in the military courts. Those courts were in another city, so i had to travel almost 30 kilometres daily to go there and play tennis. But my father supported me a lot through all this journey, and he used to take me their daily. We were not very rich at that time, so i couldn't play any tournaments because tournaments used to be held in another city. Until 2019, my father had collected some money, and then we went to Turkey in August 2019. In September 2019, we were in contact with Raphael Maurer, and we decided to come to BTA. But then the covid 19 came, and everything just stopped. I stopped tennis once again due to covid. Then, in 2021, things started to get better, and i started it in march 2021. I played some tournaments and had a good going in those. In August 2021, i got the scholarship from the Pakistan Tennis Federation. That was the best opportunity for me in my tennis journey. I availed it, but unfortunately, in October 2021, i dislocated my right hand thumb and got disconnected again. After the recovery, i started training again, played some national tournaments, and won some too. In august 2022, i dislocated my left-hand thumb, and then again, i had to disconnect from tennis. Fortunately, this was a quick recovery, and i was back on court in September. I trained 2 months very hard and played 2 ITF's juniors. I won the doubles title in both the tournaments back to back. I was lucky to win those because it was my last year for juniors. After that, i kept training at the NTC until 2023. Now, in july 2024, i finally got the chance to come to BTA and train here. My future goals are to be a pro tennis player and make my parents proud and pay back everything they have done for me.