Rising tennis star Lulu Sun left Te Anau at just five years old, but her hometown remains crazy for the sport.
Te Anau locals cram into their local tennis club to cheer on Lulu during her quarter final Photo: Supplied/Greg Sheppard
New Zealand has a new tennis star, but residents of her hometown, Te Anau, have been obsessed with the sport for long before she was on the scene.
Sun left when she was just five years old, but local Murray Willians says she still frequently visits family, and plays at their club from time to time. Even after her run at Wimbledon, Willians still thinks people will be eager to join her on the court during her next visit home.
"After what we saw these last few days, man it's impressive, but I'm sure there will be a big line of people eager to get out there and have a hit with her," he says.
As Te Anau's love for the sport grew over the years, so too did their tennis set-up. They started out with an umbrella next to a rubbish bin, but eventually got four tennis courts, a coach who moved from South Africa to take on the job, and hundreds of residents who play.
"During the summer Danny [Baleson] coaches around about 100 kids and probably about half of those continue with that coaching right through the winter, to the point now where there are some very handy juniors, some of them are in the top few kids in the country," Willians says.
There's also the Distinction Hotels Te Anau Tennis Invitational, which is held in Te Anau at the end of December every year.
Eight of New Zealand's best male players are invited to come and play for a chance to win a prize of about $20,000.
Willians says it gives aspiring players a helping hand with the financial burden of trying to break into the professional courts.
That's a burden another Kiwi tennis legend thinks Lulu Sun will know well.
Belinda Cordwell says while it may seem to some that the 23-year-old has risen to fame out of nowhere, there's no doubt she has been working incredibly hard.
"If you look back through the first years of her career, she had a WTA (Women's Tennis Association) ranking at the age of 14, which is pretty unheard of. She's played at Junior Wimbledon in 2018... she helped the University of Texas win the NCAA, which is the university college competition that is played. So, she's got some pedigree in the game," Cordwell says.
Sun faced three challenging matches to qualify for Wimbledon, which Cordwell says is a huge accomplishment in itself.
"But then for her to build on that momentum and then play so well into the second week of a Grand Slam is an incredible achievement for anybody," she says.
Sun is the first New Zealander to play a singles match on Centre Court at Wimbledon since Chris Lewis in the men's final in 1983 and the first Kiwi woman ever to make it to the singles quarterfinal at the prestigious event.
Cordwell thinks a large part of why New Zealand doesn't produce tennis stars more frequently is our geographic isolation.
"If you're born in Europe, you can be supported by your family, you can play tennis every weekend, you can travel across the border and play tournaments all the way through. [It's] really challenging to do that from New Zealand. I also think as New Zealanders, there doesn't appear to be the same really clear pathway to make it to the top level of tennis," she says.
But Cordwell says New Zealand producing another tennis star is still a possibility and being from such an isolated part of the world does have its advantages.
"You jump through a lot of hoops and get through a lot of hurdles to even get to be in a position where you have the opportunity to see how good you can be in the tennis world. You learn to kind of make do with what's available... and you grow a level of resilience that perhaps isn't as prevalent in other countries and other nationalities," she says.
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