Zeynep Sonmez

Zeynep Sonmez is the player who pushed Turkish women's tennis past a ceiling that stood for a decade. Born in Istanbul on April 30, 2002, she came up the slow way — she attended the WTA Finals Istanbul in 2011-13 at age 11 or 12, then worked as a ballgirl at the Istanbul event and was on court to watch Çağla Büyükakçay make history. The right-hander ground out her ranking on the ITF circuit, lifting her first Futures title at a 15K in Antalya before building her ranking on the Challenger tour in 2023, when she entered the top 200 for the first time.

The game is built around the return and the net, not the serve. She's no bomber — she hits 62% on first serves, averages about one ace per match, and converts roughly 52% of her break points — so the damage is done on the other side of the ball. A hallmark of her title run in Merida was her commitment to constantly swarming the net, delivering both delicate touch and authoritative overheads. The other thing fans get is a values-forward presence: she's vocal about sportsmanship, even correcting point calls in matches when it meant handing away an advantage.

The breakthrough was Mérida in 2024. She beat top seed Renata Zarazúa to reach her first WTA final, then defeated Ann Li in straight sets to become the first Turkish woman to win a WTA singles title since Büyükakçay in 2016, and only the second overall. The majors followed: at Wimbledon she became the first Turkish player in the Open Era, woman or man, to reach the third round of a Grand Slam. At the 2026 Australian Open she ran the same play as a qualifier, beating world No. 11 Ekaterina Alexandrova and Anna Bondár to reach the third round — another Open Era first for Turkey.

The current beat is a ranking nobody from her country had touched. She rose to a career-high No. 59 after a second-round showing at the WTA 1000 in Rome, surpassing Büyükakçay's mark of No. 60 from 2016. The clay swing fed it: a third round at the Madrid Open and, at the Italian Open, a comeback over home favorite Jennifer Ruggeri before Jessica Pegula ended the run. Earlier she'd logged the first top-10 win of her career, upsetting fifth seed Jasmine Paolini, then world No. 8, at the Stuttgart Open — and as of the French Open, with Ons Jabeur and coach Issam Jellali in her corner, she remains Turkey's clear No. 1.