Zeynep Sonmez won the 2024 Merida Open for her first WTA singles title, and with it she became the first Turkish player to lift a WTA Tour singles trophy since Cagla Buyukakcay in 2016. The 24-year-old from Istanbul has turned that breakthrough into a steady climb on the WTA Tour, even if her current No. 53 ranking still sits just below her career-best No. 48.
That is why her name is drawing attention now. Sonmez began 2026 at No. 110, climbed to No. 67 after a strong Australian Open, then pushed on to No. 59 in May before later reaching No. 48. She is now ranked No. 53 with a 28-19 record in 2026, a line that shows both progress and the small drop from her peak that keeps the story open.
The path matters because Sonmez did not arrive overnight. She turned professional in 2016, first broke into the WTA Top 100 in 2024, and has since built a ranking profile that reflected real momentum rather than a single hot week. Her prize money has risen with it, reaching $2,158,969 as of Aug. 31, 2026, including $864,811 in the 2026 season alone.
There is also a deeper layer to the rise. As a child, Sonmez watched the WTA Finals in Istanbul between 2011 and 2013, then later worked there as a ball girl, including during Buyukakcay’s historic run. By age 11 or 12, she was already playing tennis herself, and that early exposure to the WTA stage helped shape the player who would later win in Merida and carry Turkish tennis to a new benchmark.
What remains unanswered is how far that next step can go. Sonmez has already matched history once, then pushed past her country’s previous ranking record, but the gap between No. 48 and No. 53 shows how tightly packed the WTA middle tier can be. For now, the Merida winner is still climbing, and the next ranking move may say as much about her ceiling as her title did about her rise.
