Who is Lulu Sun, the surprise Wimbledon quarterfinalist from New Zealand?

So again, here’s a primer.

Sun, 23, was born to a Chinese mother and Croatian father in a town of 2,538 on New Zealand’s South Island, although his stepfather is German-English and lives about 200 miles away from Center Court, where he played in 2021. Won the US Open. champion and British darling Emma Raducanu in the fourth round on Sunday.

When she was young, her family left the small town in New Zealand and moved to the slightly larger city of Shanghai, where Sun spent a few years before moving to Geneva.

After so much cultural education, the time came for the trilingual Sun – who speaks bubbly, sophisticated English with no accent, as well as French and Mandarin – to continue her academic education at the behest of her mother.

Naturally, this citizen of the world chose to enroll at the University of Texas.

“I had no plans to go to university. I thought I was going straight to pro. I was still playing junior. …then I got injured. My mother, she was worried about when I would take my exams, all that,” Sun said, recalling her mother as a daughter. “Basically, he saw a message from Texas coach Howard (Joffe). She was like: ‘Oh my God! This is a good school! You should go. Message him back.’ I was like, ‘Okay, sure.’

Sun then proved that a particular Longhorn bias had managed to seep into his blood, next to Swiss and Chinese and Kiwi and Croatian and German-English influences, despite just one season in Austin in which he led the team to an NCAA title. Helped win the championship.

She said she fell in love with the school when she compared it to another institution in Texas where she played in a tournament, that institution being Texas Tech.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, there’s nothing here,'” Sun said, laughing. “I was very surprised by the city of Austin. I liked it so much that I said, wow, this is a school that’s so big, and they have everything. It was really amazing.”

Austin’s grandeur may seem far-fetched now compared to the Suns’ accomplishments over the past two weeks.

Since Sun saved a match point that might have knocked him out of the second round of qualifying, his powerful, freewheeling play has put him “first” several times.

She is the first female qualifier to reach the quarterfinals here since Kaia Kanepi in 2010, the first New Zealand woman to reach the Wimbledon quarterfinals and the first Kiwi player to do so since Chris Lewis, runner-up to John McEnroe in 1983.

She’s perhaps the biggest surprise here, a feat in itself given the unpredictable nature of female quarterfinalists. The only top 10 seeds left are No. 4 Elena Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion, and No. 7 Jasmine Paolini, last month’s surprise French Open finalist. Top-seeded Iga Swiatek lost in the third round, No. 2 Coco Gauff was upset in the fourth round, and No. 3 Aryna Sabalenka withdrew with a shoulder injury before her first-round match.

Sun will face 28-year-old tour veteran Donna Vekic of Croatia in the quarter-finals and will look to play the same big-hitting tennis she displayed against Raducanu.

“I don’t think it’s surprising. At the same time, I wasn’t thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going to the quarterfinals at Wimbledon,'” Sun said of her run. “To be honest, I was just like, OK, first game. I got over it. I was saying, okay, next match. After passing the qualifying, I was very happy because the last qualifying I played at Wimbledon, I lost in three sets in the final round of the qualifying. I was very disappointed. When you are so close to qualifying, it hurts your heart. So reaching the main draw was already a big step. Playing with all these players so far, it’s just opportunities, a new opportunity every time.”

Sun recorded her first win over a top-50 player with a stunning first-round win over No. 8 Qianwen Zheng here. In the fourth round, he won the first center court match of his career, batting against Raducanu. She shrugged off questions about the bias of British fans by saying that they are not as biased as French or US Open fans.

She watched YouTube videos of Steffi Graf playing Martina Navratilova for inspiration and remembers coming to the net because the enduring example of Roger Federer is probably stronger in her mind than most people’s. Sun played for Federer’s Switzerland until March, when he made the difficult decision to represent the country of his birth.

It still feels a bit unnatural for him to officially represent one country.

“It was definitely tough because I grew up a little bit in New Zealand. I was born there. My family is still there. I also grew up in Switzerland. Both countries are dear to me,” Sun said. “It was not an easy decision, because it is never a time when you have to choose between two things. …It will always be all the countries where I have lived and grown up or have ties to; In a way, they will always be within me. I don’t think it’s ever going to end.”