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Turkish tennis player Zeynep Sonmez moved up seven spots in the WTA weekly rankings, reaching a new career high of No. 54 after her performance at the WTA 250 Lexus Nottingham Open on grass.
The 24-year-old entered the Nottingham tournament through qualifying and beat second seed Leylah Fernandez, who is ranked No. 22 in the world, 6-4, 7-6 in the first round, winning the tiebreak 7-1.
This win also reversed her earlier loss to Fernandez at the WTA 500 Stuttgart tournament this year, where the Canadian won a three-hour, three-set match.
Sonmez then lost in the second round to Switzerland's Viktorija Golubic 7-5, 4-6, 6-4, ending her Nottingham run after nearly three hours on court.
The Nottingham ranking update extended Sonmez's period of rapid ascent in 2026.
In May, she surpassed Cagla Buyukakcay's previous national record of No. 60—set in 2016—after a second-round showing at the WTA 1000 event in Rome, becoming the highest-ranked Turkish player in WTA history.
She has since pushed that benchmark further with each tournament appearance.
Buyukakcay and Sonmez are still the only two Turkish players to have entered the WTA top 100 and to have won WTA singles titles.
Sonmez won her first tour-level title at the Merida Open in November 2024, beating Ann Li in the final. Buyukakcay won in Istanbul in 2016, a match that Sonmez attended as a ballgirl.
“Everyone in Turkish tennis was there,” Sonmez told the WTA.
Sonmez has achieved several notable results during the 2026 season. At the Australian Open in January, she qualified for the main draw and beat world No. 11 Ekaterina Alexandrova in three sets, becoming the first Turkish woman to win a main-draw match at the tournament in the Open Era. She reached the third round before losing to Yulia Putintseva.
At the Stuttgart Open in April, she upset fifth seed Jasmine Paolini, who was ranked No. 8 in the world at the time, earning her first career top-10 win.
This was only the second top-10 singles victory ever by a Turkish player, after Buyukakcay's Fed Cup win against Jelena Ostapenko in 2018, and the first on the main WTA Tour.
Sonmez was born in Istanbul in April 2002 and started playing tennis at about age 11, after coaches noticed her interest during a holiday camp.
She worked as a ballgirl at the WTA Finals in Istanbul from 2011 to 2013, where she watched players like Victoria Azarenka, Li Na, Serena Williams, and Maria Sharapova.
She says those early experiences had a big impact on her career.
She became a professional player in 2017 and spent several years improving her ranking at ITF and WTA 125 events.
She broke into the top 100 for the first time in November 2024 after winning the title in Merida.
In 2025, she reached the third round at Wimbledon, becoming the first Turkish player of any gender to do so at a Grand Slam in the Open Era. She matched this achievement at the 2026 Australian Open.
Her current coach is Issam Jellali, who has also worked with former world No. 2 Ons Jabeur.
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