Selima Sfar ( ; born 8 July 1977) is a Tunisian former tennis player.

She turned professional in 1999 and has been ranked as high as 75th in the world (16 July 2001). Sfar is the second highest ranked female Tunisian and Arab player. She has experienced most of her success in tournaments of the ITF Women's Circuit, winning 11 singles titles and 21 doubles titles.

Biography

Sfar started playing tennis at age 8 at the Tennis Club of Carthage. She left Tunis at age 12 to live and train with Nathalie Tauziat under coach Régis de Camaret in Biarritz, France. The serve-and-volleyer preferred indoor hardcourts; favorite shots were serve, backhand. Father, Moncef, is a physician; mother, Zeineb, is a dermatologist; older sister is Sonia and younger brother is Hassan. She is a granddaughter of Habib Cheikhrouhou who founded the press group Dar Assabah in 1951.

Tennis career

As a junior, Sfar won the Arab Junior Singles in 1992 and reached the quarter-finals of the junior tournament at French Open. In 1994, she was African junior champion. She turned professional in 1999. In 2000, she qualified for the US Open, to become the first Tunisian to achieve this feat. In the meantime, she was able to receive wildcards for Middle Eastern tournaments in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. At the Dubai Tennis Championships in 2001, she reached the quarterfinals, beating Silvija Talaja and Barbara Schett before being defeated by Nathalie Tauziat, in three sets. In that year, she became the first Arab woman to break into the top 100 of the WTA rankings.

Sfar played for the Tunisia Fed Cup team, going 41–24. She also competed in the 1996 Summer Olympics, losing in the first round to Brenda Schultz-McCarthy, and the 2008 Summer Olympics, losing in the first round to Caroline Wozniacki. Sfar holds the records for the Tunesian in the Fed Cup with the most wins, the most singles wins, the most doubles wins, the most ties played, and the most years played.

At the 2005 African Cup of Nations in Tunis, Sfar won the gold medal at both the singles and mixed teams' competitions.

At the 2008 Wimbledon Championships, Sfar and her partner Ekaterina Makarova reached the quarterfinals of the ladies' doubles, before they were defeated by Lisa Raymond and Samantha Stosur.

In 2011, Sfar announced her retirement from professional tennis. In the meantime, she became a commentator for Qatari sports channel, beIN Sports.

At the 2015 Wimbledon Championships, Sfar teamed with Martina Navratilova for the Invitational Ladies Doubles, and they won all three of their matches in their group.

Post-retirement

On 28 August 2023, Sfar had an interview with L'Équipe in which she accused her coach, Régis de Camaret, of rape and sexual abuse, when she was 12 and a half years old. The same coach was accused by Isabelle Demongeot of similar misconduct and later jailed for 8 years in 2012. Eight weeks later, in September 2023, Sfar gave a further interview to CNN Arabic, in which she described her decision to speak publicly and announced her intention to create a structure dedicated to preventing institutional abuse in sport and supporting survivors: "I decided to create a company with this professional to share this method and to help preventing abuse in sports institutions specifically, and also to help people who got abused to get out of it."

On 13 May 2022, Sfar had co-founded Unus Mundus, a consulting and transformation methodology firm registered in Dubai, alongside Fernando Cavalher, described by L'Équipe as a "spécialiste de l'inconscient et des rêves" (specialist in the unconscious mind and dreams) and creator of the Paradigm of Sense, a post-Jungian system of psychological thought developed over nearly three decades.

Sfar serves as Marraine (Patron) of Université Paris-Dauphine PSL Campus de Tunis. In December 2025, she co-presented "The Shark Mindset Experience" at Université Paris-Dauphine PSL in Paris, an event exploring emotional intelligence and leadership presence.

In 2026, Unus Mundus and Université Paris-Dauphine PSL Campus de Tunis jointly launched The Management Code, described by the university as the first Executive Education programme in the world entirely dedicated to the quality of sovereign leadership presence in organisations. The programme runs over 28 hours across four days and is structured around four pillars: emotional intelligence, immaterial presence and sovereignty, the intelligence of error and the unknown, and Jungian typology as a strategic tool for collective intelligence.

Sfar is represented as an international keynote speaker by Champions Speakers Agency and has served as a Global Brand Ambassador for Lacoste.

ITF finals

Singles: 19 (11–8)

Doubles: 33 (21–12)

References

External links