{"id":86375,"date":"2025-07-03T11:41:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T15:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=86375"},"modified":"2025-07-03T11:41:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T15:41:18","slug":"zeynep-sonmez-first-turkish-slam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2025\/07\/03\/zeynep-sonmez-first-turkish-slam\/","title":{"rendered":"Zeynep Sonmez Becomes First Turkish Player in the Third Round of a Slam \u2013 and Her Country Went Crazy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For the first time in the Open Era, a tennis player from Turkey has reached the third round in singles at a Grand Slam. It\u2019s Zeynep Sonmez, World No. 88, who achieved this at <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/category\/wimbledon\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Wimbledon<\/a>. The 23-year-old, born in Istanbul, had already made history in the first round by defeating Jacqueline Cristian, becoming the first Turkish player ever to win a match in the main draw of a Grand Slam. That alone would have been a tournament to remember&#8211;but she didn\u2019t stop there.<\/p>\n<h2>A Shocking Upset<\/h2>\n<p>In the second round, Sonmez faced China\u2019s Xinyu Wang, who had recently reached the final in Berlin and came off a win over former Slam finalist <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wtatennis.com\/players\/322191\/karolina-muchova\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Karolina Muchova<\/a>. Wang was the heavy favorite, but Sonmez stunned everyone, prevailing 7-5 7-5 in a match that lasted nearly two hours. The match point captured the significance of the moment: as soon as Wang&#8217;s backhand landed out Sonmez screamed, put her hands over her face in disbelief, and dropped to her knees before even reaching the net to shake hands. She then shared a heartfelt hug with Wang, a respectful handshake with the umpire, and finally, the celebrations began. She waved to the crowd, many of whom were clapping and filming the historic moment, and then walked to her box in tears, hugging her team.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Historic moment for Turkish tennis \ud83c\uddf9\ud83c\uddf7 <\/p>\n<p>World No.88 Zeynep Sonmez is the first player from Turkey to reach the third round in singles at a Grand Slam in the Open Era! <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Wimbledon?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#Wimbledon<\/a> <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/XXW3r2PoPX\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/XXW3r2PoPX<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Wimbledon (@Wimbledon) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Wimbledon\/status\/1940750397548679242?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">July 3, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>Zeynep Sonmez\u2019s Journey<\/h3>\n<p>Though her result may seem unexpected, Sonmez\u2019s success on grass is no coincidence. Years ago, she made a conscious decision to adapt to the surface. Even when she was ranked outside the Top 200, she stepped out of her comfort zone and chose to compete in grass-court tournaments in the U.K., rather than sticking to clay or hard courts where she had previously enjoyed more success. Before this year\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wimbledon.com\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Wimbledon<\/a>, she had compiled a solid 15\u201310 record on grass, showing how much more at ease she has become on the surface.<\/p>\n<h3>A Nation Behind Its Star<\/h3>\n<p>Sonmez\u2019s breakthrough has inspired a surge of interest in tennis within Turkey, similar to what happened in the Philippines with Alexandra Eala and in Brazil with <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2025\/05\/09\/fonseca-losses-expected\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Jo\u00e3o Fonseca<\/a>. However, in Turkey\u2019s case, the passion for sports was already evident&#8211;especially in football. Now, Turkish fans are channeling that same enthusiasm into tennis. Under videos of Sonmez\u2019s match point, posted by Wimbledon and various journalists, the comment sections are filled with joyful and emotional messages from Turkish supporters. Can the dream continue? Sonmez\u2019s next opponent is Ekaterina Alexandrova in the third round&#8211;a tough match, no doubt, but not an impossible one.<\/p>\n<p><a  id=\"VxNV-bjDTtBWvq5QcRG9ng\" class=\"gie-single\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/2223362444\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'VxNV-bjDTtBWvq5QcRG9ng',sig:'BTLHX3ya41k4x18qLuQLLJFFOr-3nnytc0uWV4oJArM=',w:'594px',h:'390px',items:'2223362444',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n<p><em>Main Photo Credit: Susan Mullane-USA TODAY Sports<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the first time in the Open Era, a tennis player from Turkey has reached the third round in singles at a Grand Slam. It\u2019s Zeynep Sonmez, World No. 88, who achieved this at Wimbledon. The 23-year-old, born in Istanbul, had already made history in the first round by defeating Jacqueline Cristian, becoming the first [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5454,"featured_media":85018,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,2,9,6],"tags":[43062,16553,4184,7262,18636,8154,18884],"class_list":["post-86375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wta","category-featured","category-news","category-wimbledon","tag-2025-wimbledon","tag-alexandra-eala","tag-ekaterina-alexandrova","tag-jacqueline-cristian","tag-joao-fonseca","tag-xinyu-wang","tag-zeynep-sonmez"],"modified_by":"Yesh Ginsburg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5454"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86375"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86379,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86375\/revisions\/86379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}