A professional tennis match descended into farce Wednesday when a player who appeared to have barely played the sport won just three points in a 6-0, 6-0 defeat — having told tournament organizers that she had an appropriate level for the event.

Hajar Abdelkader, a 21-year-old Egyptian wildcard playing her first professional match, was hammered by Lorena Schaedel — a German ranked just outside the world’s top 1,000 — in the first round of a W35 event in Nairobi, part of the Women’s World Tennis Tour. This is a level below the WTA Tour, but a W35 tournament offers total prize money of $30,000 and there were seven players ranked inside the world’s top 500 at the Nairobi event this week.

Of the three points Abdelkader won, two came from Schaedel double faults. For the third, Abdelkader returned Schaedel’s serve, and the German — perhaps not having expected to hit a rally ball at all — missed a regulation forehand long.

Abdelkader herself double-faulted on 20 of her 24 service points and was barely able to return Schaedel’s serve.

A request to interview Abdelkader was declined, while Schaedel did not immediately respond to a request. Tournament director Martha Tirop did not respond to a request for comment.

But in a statement sent to The Athletic Thursday, Tennis Kenya, which organises the tournament, said that Abelkader received a wild card “following a short-notice withdrawal by the originally awarded Main Draw wildcard recipient, who opted into the Qualifying draw.”

It described the decision to award Abelkdader a wild card as “taken on the information provided and in the interest of maintaining a full and balanced draw while supporting the development of tennis in Africa.

“In hindsight, Tennis Kenya acknowledges that this wild card should not have been granted given the level. The federation has taken note of this experience and will ensure that such an extremely rare occurrence never happens again.”

The match lasted only 37 minutes, and would have been even shorter if not for the time Schaedel spent retrieving balls that Abdelkader had missed, or had failed to knock back over the net when points finished. There are no ballkids at this level.

The footage quickly went viral, with the whole match hosted on the ITF’s website. Ukrainian men’s player Artem Bahmet produced an even worse performance at a men’s Futures event in 2019, losing all 48 points to Thailand’s Krittin Koaykul in a 6-0, 6-0 defeat, but that was a qualifier, rather than a main draw match.

There was a time when the World Tennis Tour was synonymous with poor conditions, bad pay and these kinds of stories, but improvements have been made in the past few years. And as players such as Victoria Mboko, Loïs Boisson and Janice Tjen showed last year, the World Tennis Tour can be an excellent grounding for the rigours of the WTA Tour. Playing in countries with less of a tennis heritage like Kenya is also a way for the ITF to try and grow the game.