Biography | Nasser Al-Khelaifi — The Khalifa Complex Where a Davis Cup Player Took the Federation

The Khalifa International Tennis and Squash Complex sits at the West Bay end of Doha, at the corner of Majlis Al Taawon and Al Markhiya.

The Qatar Tennis Federation owns the place. It opened on 16 December 1992 and still hosts the country's ATP and WTA weeks.

Nasser bin Ghanim Al-Khelaifi learned the game on courts like these.

Davis Cup records list him as Nasser-Ghanim Al Khulaifi. He played 45 ties for Qatar between 1992 and 2002.

The official ledger is 12–31 in singles and 12–16 in doubles.

Only Sultan Khalfan Al-Alawi has a larger Qatar Davis Cup ledger.

On the ATP main tour he appeared twice and lost both first-round matches: to Thomas Muster at St. Pölten in 1996, and at home in Doha in 2002.

His career-high singles ranking was No. 995, reached on 4 November 2002.

The tennis years also put him on court with Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, later emir of Qatar. Later profiles treat that friendship as the hinge of his working life.

In November 2008 the federation made Al-Khelaifi its president. The office is still here.

The same complex now runs men's and women's tour events, squash, padel and badminton under an expanded federation name.

The General Assembly re-elected him by acclamation on 29 November 2024, in a meeting held on these grounds.

A visitor today finds a 7,000-seat centre court rebuilt in 2008, practice courts, and the federation offices behind the show courts.

The player who never won an ATP match now signs the invitations that bring the world No. 1 to Doha each winter.

Photo: Doha Stadium Plus Qatar, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Al-Khelaifi with Karim Alami at the 2012 Qatar Open.