Lulu Sun's Incredible Run At Wimbledon Comes To An End

Lulu Sun has done herself and her nation proud in her 5-7 6-4 6 6-1 loss to Donna Vekic in the Wimbledon quarterfinals on Tuesday.

The 23-year-old’s incredible run of seven wins at this year’s Championship, including three in qualifying has been an inspiration to tennis fans back in New Zealand, but unfortunately, it came to an end against the world No 37 from Croatia.

Sun played her usual aggressive tennis for the first two sets and even though Vekic won the third set, Sun never gave up, holding when down 0-5, showing that she'd fight to the end.

Despite this loss, it has been a life-changing two weeks for Sun, who has picked up enough ranking points from this experience to be able to play fully on the WTA Tour.

Sun got a confident hold in the second game, even though she broke a string on the first point.

Two games later Sun had to defend three break points during an epic battle that lasted for 12 minutes, but she came through this to stay in the set and she had her first break point at 3-3, but wasn’t able to convert.

The decisive moment in the set came when Vekic was broken at 5-5, making three unforced errors and after having to save a break point, Sun won the next game to go a set up.

The first seven games of the next set were dominated by the server, but Sun was eventually broken.

However, when serving for the set, Vekic double-faulted five times and Sun got the break back. However, Sun was broken once more in the following game, to send the match to a deciding set.

Vekic got on a charge from the beginning of it and Sun looked like all the time she had spent on court over the past two weeks, including three matches in qualifying, was taking its toll on her body and she began cramping.

“It was a tough match, Donna played really well,” Sun said in her post-match press conference.

“She picked it up in the second set. Obviously the third set, I mean, towards the end of the second and third, I had troubles physically with some cramps.

“That's maybe the only regret I have is I couldn't keep up physically, but she played better today and she deserved the win.”

Having spent so much time on court, with eight intense matches over 15 days, it’s no surprise she was cramping against Vekic.

Four of her matches in the main draw went to three sets and the one that didn’t, against Zhu Lin, finished 7-6 7-6.

“I think physically I did have a little bit of issues at the end. But honestly, I think she played well today,” Sun said.

“Maybe if I could have moved faster, maybe if I didn't have the cramps, who knows what would have happened?

“But it did happen and I can't change the fact what happened.

“Yeah, I did have a lot of matches. It might have been a cause of that, but I've learned a lot throughout these matches that I've had. So I think I can take from it into the next tournaments.”

Sun had planned to play at a clay court WTA tournament in Hungary next week, where she would have had to enter qualifying as her ranking points from Wimbledon this week, wouldn’t be on her record in time.

But she says she might now give that a miss and focus on preparing to play doubles at the Olympics with Erin Routliffe.

“I'm super pumped about that,” she said.

“I did enter myself in another tournament, but unfortunately I have to withdraw from that because I don't think I'll have enough time to prepare for that one.

“But, yeah, I'm super excited to be able to play at the Olympics with Erin.”

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