WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – The Purdue men's tennis team welcomed Mujtaba Ali-Khan to the family, as he signed his National Letter of Intent to play for the Boilermakers starting in the fall of 2022.
"It's great to finally welcome Mujtaba officially to our program" head coach Pawel Gajdzik said. "He's a hardworking student-athlete on the court and in the classroom who can make a large impact on our program. We look forward to watching him grow when he joins us next year."
Ali-Khan will journey to Purdue after a highly-rated prep career. The Hinsdale, Ill., native is a four-star recruit, ranked No. 57 in the nation, per Tennis Recruiting Network, No. 10 in the Midwest and No. 4 in Illinois.
Over the week of Nov. 13-20, Ali-Khan played in his first ITA Junior event at the J5 ITF Pakistan ITA-Midcourt International Juniors Tennis Championship in Islamabad. The future Boilermaker won the singles flight and reached the semifinals in doubles. After reaching the main draw through a qualifying match, Ali-Khan streamed through the field with six wins, all in straight sets, even knocking off world No. 791 Yunes Talavar from Iran. Paired with Ferdi Tangal from Turkey in doubles, Ali-Khan came up shot in the semifinals after a super tiebreak against Nepal's Aarav samrat Hada and Aki Zuben Rawat, the No. 1 seed and ranked 676 and 796 in the world, respectively.
He climbed up to No. 77 in the USTA U18 National Rankings and reached the finals of the Midwest Closed U16 Championships. His Tennis RPI was as high as No. 28.
Ali-Khan earned Illinois All-State honors after leading the Red Devils to back-to-back 2A State Championships in 2018 and 2019. Hinsdale Central finished second in 2021. He placed third in the doubles event in 2018-19 for Class 2A.
Tennis Recruiting Network listed his prep career record at 33-18 in singles, with 31 combined career wins against 3, 4 and 5-star recruits.
Ali-Khan has made some deep runs in events during his prep career with eight top-5 finishes at national level 2 and 3 events. He was a finalist at the ITA Summer Circuit in Minneapolis and a doubles finalist at a USTA level 2 doubles tournament.
Excelling beyond the courts, Ali-Khan has been a mainstay on the honor roll and dean's list at Hinsdale.