Clair Liu reached the third round of a Grand Slam for the first time on Wednesday, beating Zeynep Sonmez 7-5, 6-3 at Wimbledon and turning a career that had stopped short of that stage into a breakthrough. The 26-year-old, ranked No. 146, will next face Coco Gauff.
For Liu, the win landed on the same day she was supposed to be checking out of her London hotel. She said she had already packed up after extending her stay a couple of times, only to realize she was still alive in the draw. Her boyfriend reminded her that being packed did not mean she was leaving, and Liu said she was now looking for hotels again, with a return to the same one a possibility.
The result matters because it ended a long run of near misses. Liu had played 29 Grand Slams as a professional before Wednesday, with seven trips to the second round, 13 first-round exits and nine departures in qualifying. She also came into Wimbledon through qualifying, which made the run feel even less likely after a season that had already been through more change than most players face in several years.
Liu has been writing about that stretch in her Substack blog Finding Claire-ity. In a December 2025 post, she described 2025 as a year of realizing stuff and said parting ways with her coach in January left her internally destroyed after working with him since 2017. She later took the rest of the season off after 2024 Roland Garros to focus on her mental health, then returned to the tour and began working with Clemens Wagner after the 2025 US Open.
That backdrop helps explain why this result did not sound like triumph from a player who had spent the spring rebuilding. Liu said she was not expecting the win and admitted she usually likes to plan things out, but this time she was improvising down to the hotel. She also said younger her would have believed in this kind of run more readily than she does now, a small line that fits a player still trying to restore the confidence she said she has been working to rebuild.
She has reason to believe the match can mean more than one good day. Liu won the Wimbledon junior championship in 2017, but this is the first time she has carried that court comfort into the second week of a Grand Slam as a pro. Against Gauff, the question is no longer whether she belongs in the draw. It is how far a player who spent the morning checking out can carry a Wimbledon stay that was supposed to end by lunchtime.
