There’s a viral video from last month’s Australian Open that shows a tennis player stop play during a match and rush to help a ball girl who had fallen on her back and appeared to be struggling upon getting back up.
She helped the girl walk to a shaded area on the sidelines of the court and held her up in her arms when the girl suddenly fainted.
Thankfully, the ballkid received medical treatment and recovered quickly from what turned out to be a heat-related issue.
The player who came to her rescue is Zeynep Sonmez, whose heroics in Melbourne were not just limited to helping an ailing ballkid.
The Turkish 23-year-old arrived at the Australian Open ranked 112 in the world, hoping to compete in the main draw for a fifth consecutive Grand Slam.
She won three qualifying matches to make it to the tournament proper before she took on 11th-seeded Ekaterina Alexandrova in the first round of the main draw.
The last time they had met was in the third round at Wimbledon last year.
Sonmez made history that week as the first Turkish player to reach the third round of a Grand Slam in the Open Era, although her run was ended by Alexandrova.
In the rematch in Melbourne, Sonmez flipped the script and upset the Russian, who was ranked 101 spots higher than her, to become the first Turkish woman to win a match at the Australian Open in the Open Era.
Another victory in the next round saw Sonmez match her Wimbledon exploits, and at that point she had what felt like the entire Turkish diaspora residing in Melbourne cheering her on from the stands.
Sonmez lost in the third round to Yulia Putintseva in three close sets, but walked away from Melbourne Park with thousands of new fans, thanks to her kind gesture towards the ballkid and her five impressive victories through qualifying and the main draw.
“I'm very grateful for what I'm doing and what I'm able to do on the court,” Sonmez told The National on the sidelines of last week’s Mubadala Abu Dhabi Open.
“I feel very supported. I feel like there are a lot of people who just came out there to support me. And they were waiting all day long. So it feels so good. It feels like I'm not alone. And it feels very special to be able to represent my country.”
Sonmez laughs when she is asked if her strong start to the year and her Australian Open run will make her reevaluate her goals for the season and perhaps raise her expectations moving forward.
“So this is the first time something like this is happening. This is the first year I start good. So I don't know,” the Istanbul-native says with a chuckle.
“Right now, I'm just trying to keep up the good work and like I've said many times, I play better when I enjoy being on the court. So I will try to do that as much as I can. And we'll see.”
Ons Jabeur 'like a big sister'
Back in the top 100 and edging closer to her career-high ranking of 69, Sonmez certainly seems to be enjoying herself on the WTA Tour at the moment.
During pre-season, she spent time training at the Ons Jabeur Academy in Dubai,, and has hired Jabeur’s coach Issam Jellali, to guide her through the 2026 campaign while Jabeur is out on maternity leave.
Jellali was helping Sonmez remotely during the Australian summer but has been with her and her fitness/mental coach Mehmet Bayraktar since the start of the Middle East swing, which kicked off in Abu Dhabi last week before moving on to this week’s Qatar Open in Doha.
“It's going very good. Ons is like a big sister. She is a great player, a great human being. Everyone loves her, I don't have to say that. And Issam is here with me,” said Sonmez.
“I really appreciate it. I think we are a great team altogether. And I think everything is going well until now. We are working on small things and we're trying to get better every day. I'm happy with where we are.”
Sonmez added that Jabeur was around during her pre-season training block in Dubai.
“She was sometimes checking in. And every time she would come, I was always practising. So she was telling Issam, ‘Let her rest a little bit'. And I was like, ‘Please tell him, please tell him’,” joked Sonmez.
“She was very supportive and she was there sometimes. So it was very good to be in Dubai with them.”
Meeting Djokovic and feeling like she belongs
Sonmez did not grow up in a tennis family. Her mother was a gymnast and Sonmez did gymnastics between the ages of three and eight. One year during summer school, she was doing swimming and basketball and she recalls hating the latter.
“I was running away [from basketball] and trying to play with huge [tennis] racquets. And that's where my first coach saw me. And he said to my family that if she likes playing tennis, she can play tennis. She doesn't need to play basketball. And that's how I started. So basically, I started playing tennis just because I wanted to,” she said.
Driven by her love for the game, Sonmez decided to pursue a professional tennis career and says some of her favourite players growing up included Maria Sharapova, Li Na, Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin.
She hasn’t met any of those legends yet, but she did have a surreal moment in Melbourne last month.
“In the Australian Open, I spoke to Novak Djokovic. And I was like, ‘Oh my God. Oh my God. Is this real?’ He said, ‘Congrats’. And we talked for a while. So it was very special,” she revealed.
Sonmez made her WTA Tour-level debut at a grass-court tournament in mid-2023. Her breakthrough came a year and a half later when she clinched a maiden WTA title in Merida, becoming Turkey’s first trophy winner on the women’s tour since Cagla Buyukakcay in 2016.
“Once you become a tennis player, you understand how difficult it is, the lifestyle, because it's not just playing tennis on court,” she says.
“You have to live your life very professionally. You have to wake up early, sleep early, eat good. And you have to have good people around you. So it's a difficult thing. But I'm glad I didn't know that before I started. Maybe I wouldn't choose it? I don't know right now. But, yeah, I feel like I didn't really know what it was. But I just love the game, so I chose tennis.”
Sonmez is still based in Istanbul, although it’s hard spending much time at home when you’re on tour for almost 11 months a year.
She says the hardest part of the job is the constant travel, but finds solace in the fact that there are direct flights from almost everywhere to Istanbul, which gives her the chance to make short stops at home whenever possible.
Does she feel like she belongs now that she’s spent almost a full 18 months competing at this level?
“I think it's something that builds up. You need to get used to it because it's a change of environment and everything. And I think I'm more comfortable right now than I was before. I have more friends and, like, I enjoy it more right now than when I first came,” she explains.
While she says tennis is still not a big sport in Turkey, people back home have started to take notice of her progress and she feels “as a country, with tennis, we're going on a good way”.
