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Sun, 23, was born to a Chinese mother and Croatian father in a town of 2,538 people on New Zealand’s South Island, but her stepfather is British of German descent and hails from about 320 kilometres from Centre Court, where she beat 2021 US Open champion and British favourite Emma Raducanu in the fourth round on Sunday.
When Sun was young, his family left their small town in New Zealand for the slightly larger city of Shanghai, where he spent a few years before moving to Geneva.
After all this cultural education, the time came for Sun – who speaks English, French and Chinese with a cheerful and refined voice and no hint of an accent – to continue her studies, per her mother’s urging.
Not surprisingly, this global citizen chose to attend the University of Texas.
“I wasn’t going to go to university. I was going straight to the pros. I was still playing juniors. … Then I got injured. My mum was worried about when I was going to take my exams and stuff like that,” Sun told her mother in a daughterly manner. “Long story short, my mum saw the message from Howard. [Joffe]I got a call from my girlfriend, the coach at Texas. She was like, ‘Oh wow! This is a great school! You have to go. Get him back.’ And I was like, ‘Sure, sure.'”
Sun, despite only having one season in Austin and helping the team win an NCAA championship, proved that Longhorns prejudices are in her blood, along with Swiss, Chinese, New Zealand, Croatian and German-British influences.
She said she fell in love with the school compared to another Texas school in the tournament, Texas Tech.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, there’s nothing here,'” Sun said with a laugh. “I was so impressed with the city of Austin. I fell in love with it so much, and I was like, wow, this school is so big and they have everything. It was amazing.”
Austin’s grandiosity may seem remote now compared to what the Sun have accomplished over the past two weeks.
Since escaping a crisis of elimination in the second round of qualifying, Sun has achieved a number of firsts with her bold, free-spirited play.
She is the first female qualifier to reach the quarter-finals here since Kaia Kanepi in 2010, the first New Zealand woman to reach the quarter-finals at Wimbledon and the first New Zealander to do so since Chris Lewis, who was runner-up to John McEnroe in 1983.
She’s perhaps the biggest surprise here, a feat in itself given the unexpected calibre of the women’s quarterfinalists. The only two top 10 seeds remaining are No. 4 seed Elena Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion, and No. 7 seed Jasmine Paolini, who was a surprise finalist at Roland Garros last month. No. 1 seed Iga Swiatek lost in the third round, No. 2 seed Coco Gauff was upset in the fourth round and No. 3 seed Aryna Sabalenka withdrew before the first round with a shoulder injury.
Sun will face 28-year-old tour veteran Donna Vekic of Croatia in the quarterfinals and will be ready to display the same hard-hitting tennis she showed against Raducanu.
“I guess it’s not surprising, but I didn’t expect to make it to the quarterfinals of Wimbledon,” Sun said of her performance. “Honestly, it was like, OK, I got through the first match, OK, next match. After I qualified, I was super happy because the last time I qualified at Wimbledon, I lost in the last round in three sets. It was super disappointing. It hurts because I was so close to qualifying. So just to be in the main draw was a big step. I’ve played against these players before and this is an opportunity, a new opportunity every time.”
Sun proved himself here by beating No. 8 Zheng Qinwen in the first round, his first win over a player ranked inside the 50th. In the fourth round, he beat Raducane on Centre Court and refuted a question about British fans’ bias by saying they were less biased than fans at the French or US Opens.
She watches Steffi Graf vs. Martina Navratilova on YouTube for inspiration, and stays online because the enduring example of Roger Federer lurks in her mind, perhaps more than most. Son played for Federer’s Switzerland team until March, at which point she made the difficult decision to represent her native country.
It still feels a bit unnatural that she has to officially represent a country.
“It was definitely difficult because I grew up a bit in New Zealand. I was born in New Zealand. My family is still there. I also grew up in Switzerland. Both countries are important to me,” Sun said. “It’s always like when you have to choose between two things, so it wasn’t an easy decision. … All the countries that I’ve spent time in, that I grew up in and that I have connections with will always be there for me. I don’t think that will ever go away.”