He was the world’s youngest gold badge tennis umpire at just 24 and despite his relatively short tenure at the top of the chair, the charismatic Tunisian created waves as a pioneering Arab in the field.
Constantly in search of a new challenge, Adel Aref then swapped the chair for a marketing position at the Qatar Tennis Federation, where he helped run the show at the ATP and WTA events there. He was a crucial member of the team that organised Davis Cup in Dubai last week and will continue to consult for Tennis Emirates in the future.
How did you get to be an umpire at such a young age?
I was a player from seven until 18, but when I was 16 I got a back injury and I started becoming really fat. And Slah Bramly (now Technical Director at Tennis Emirates) and some other guys in tennis were pushing me to do this course in Tunisia, I was 16. I passed, I topped the class. And the referee at the time, he was a gold badge, asked my parents if he could take me to Portugal to do tournaments over there. So I went to Portugal for four weeks.
I was young and didn’t have a clue. It was those Satellite tournaments where you had no line umpires with you. They were eating me alive. I would literally go back to my room at night, call my grandfather and start crying. At 18 I had already decided that I wanted to become a gold badge. Everyone was telling me ‘no, this is for Grand Slam countries, you’re from Tunisia, you’re Arab, African, it’s very tough’ but I always knew that one day or another I will get there.
Two years later I passed my bronze badge in Cairo. After bronze I got the silver badge at 22 then at 24 I got the gold badge and that’s when everything went really quick.
You quit when you were 28. Why is that?
In 2008, that was a year I travelled like 300 days. I literally went around the world twice. My body was shutting down. I hated the fact that I was doing all this and I knew that I cannot become platinum because there’s nothing higher than gold badge. And you can be doing this for ages (without reaching something higher).
Do you remember your first Slam?
Wimbledon, qualifying, was my first Slam, in 1998. I was 18 years old. It’s so funny because you get there and you don’t know what you’re doing. I was so scared because I knew that was a chance and if I missed it I would never come back.
Is there a specific match that felt like a big turning point for you as an umpire?
I was doing a lot of Davis Cup, and the Davis Cup is a huge challenge because you’re not only dealing with the players, you’re dealing with the crowd as well. And my first one was Zimbabwe. I travelled for 15 hours from Paris to Zimbabwe and that was my first big match. It went five sets. I was sitting in the chair for six hours and I was sweating. It was the Black brothers, Wayne and Byron Black. They are experienced players. And after that things kind of clicked. I started getting more and bigger assignments.
Was it difficult getting respect when you were clearly a very young umpire?
It was a nightmare. I had to work more than the others because of my age. I really want to give credit to my previous boss, Mike Morrissey, he was the head of officiating and people were jealous because he was pushing me. He gave me a chance but I also had to prove myself on the chair.
Part of officiating is handling players when they lose their temper on court. How did you deal with that?
Officiating is all about experience. You learn how to deal with the players. You get to know them all. So you know you’re not going to deal with a Roger Federer like you deal with a Arnaud Clement or a Rainer Schuettler. And when I started officiating you had Yevgeny Kafelnikov, Goran Ivanisevic, Marat Safin and those guys and their temper was like… I remember Ivanisevic going crazy at me in Doha because I missed a call on the baseline. I was shivering. He was screaming, going mad at me, mentally I was burnt.
One of the most famous incidents was when Andy Murray swore at you in a Davis Cup match in 2006…
The funny part is people still think that I quit officiating because of that incident. And that’s not the case. It’s part of our job. Andy was very young. Great Britain against Serbia and Montenegro at the time – it was a huge tie. It was during the doubles, Murray completely lost it on a line call, on the far sideline.
I couldn’t really do anything because it’s on the far sideline and it’s very tough to overrule a line umpire who is there. So he was going on and on for a while. The microphones were under my chair and Andy didn’t have the experience at that time and the BBC picked up everything and it became huge.
The next day I literally couldn’t get out of my hotel. I had to go out from the back door. It was drama. We’re not allowed to talk to the media in these kind of things and I had to basically bite the bullet. Andrew Castle said on BBC at the time that I was right, so that was a small consolation.
Sometimes it’s so unfair that you can’t explain what happened. But the fact that Murray was fined was a huge thing. The next Wimbledon, everyone was still talking about it. Funny enough, when I was living in Monte Carlo, Murray was there for a couple of weeks, we would literally not talk to each other. We would walk in the same street and pass each other and never say anything.
He never apologised?
He apologised two years later in Paris. We then got closer when he came to Doha when I was working with the QTF. We spoke about it and now we laugh. He’s such a nice guy. I give him a lot of credit. He was young and the press were using everything against him.
Are there any certain players you dreaded officiating their matches?
Definitely. We have a blacklist. Before a tournament you’d send your blacklist and you would put the names of the players that you don’t want to umpire.
Who was on your blacklist?
Murray was on my blacklist. You don’t want to create problems with the same player all the time. I had Arnaud Clement for a while.
The French guys when you speak French with them they take it as an advantage then they nag about everything. Why is the temperature so high, why is the ball kid there, why is the towel not white? They would find excuses all the time.
What was your craziest experience?
That tour in West Africa. I was there for six weeks doing Futures tournaments to get some experience. I arrived in Lagos from Sweden and there were armed men all over the airport. I got to the hotel, a lizard was the first thing I saw. Got to the tennis club, the courts are cracked and I had to stop a match because there was a snake on the court. Another match, a Nigerian was playing a French guy and I see two guys on top of the stadium waving at me, showing me their gun, trying to get me to side with their guy. And it was like that for six weeks.
Considering you were really young, and you can’t really be friends with the players, did you get lonely on tour?
I’m a sociable guy so I like to be around people, joking, laughing. But in that field, there’s so much competition that I tend to befriend someone then suddenly they’re stabbing you in the back. In French we say ‘panier de crabes’ which means a bucket of crabs. If they can do anything to keep you down, they’ll do it. That’s when I started to feel like this isn’t the life I wanted to lead.
Would you ever go back?
Never.
What do you do now?
I opened my own company in sports management. I do some stuff for Victoria Azarenka, a lot of tennis players, a lot of tournaments. I do media stuff for them, I do marketing, I get them sponsors, these kind of things. Last Wimbledon I dressed Azarenka for the Wimbledon party. I’m based in Beirut now. I do events. For example I help Sony get talent for The Voice, the Arabic version.
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