WIMBLEDON — Lulu Sun’s run to the quarterfinals has been one of the feel-good stories of this year’s Wimbledon.
Ranked No 123 and coming into just her second Grand Slam, the 23-year-old beat home hope Emma Raducanu on Sunday to reach the last eight as a qualifier, and has won more in prize money (£375,000) than in the rest of her career combined (£244,868).
She has a Chinese mother and a Croatian father, plus a stepdad from Devon. She was born and grew up in the tiny town of Te Anau in New Zealand at the very bottom of the globe and moved to Switzerland aged five after a brief spell in China. Sun speaks three languages, English, French and Mandarin, and in March switched her nationality to New Zealand — partly so she could represent the country at the Olympics this summer.
Before that she studied political science at the University of Texas, where she led the tennis team to the NCAA championship and was so conscientious that she completed her degree in three, rather than four years. “She’s a working machine,” says her former mentor at Texas, Howard Joffe, the head coach for the women’s tennis team there.
Sun is the first New Zealand woman to make the quarterfinals here and her success is big news back home, even overshadowing the rugby union All Blacks’ win…
