Aussie tennis legend Rod Laver, a four-time winner at Wimbledon, is known to pop in during matches where “coffee, tea, lunch and afternoon tea refreshments are on offer”.
The Te Anau-born Sun is already set to earn the biggest payday of her young career – £375,000 ($782,056) should her run end at the quarter-finals.
Sun next faces world No 37 Donna Vekic of Croatia at midnight NZT on Court 1.
She is the first qualifier in 14 years to reach the quarter-final stage in the women’s draw at Wimbledon, the last being Estonian Kaia Kanepi in 2010. Sun came into the tournament as the world No 123 and will now crack the top 60.
Last year, unseeded American Christopher Eubanks said it was a “dream come true” to earn lifelong tickets.
“It’s tough to really put into words. I can’t really describe it,” he said. “Everything from realising that I have two credentials at Wimbledon for the rest of my life, to checking my phone and seeing my name as an ESPN alert, to realising how much I disliked grass at the beginning of the grass court season, to now look at where I am. There’s so many different ways I could go about it.”
The last New Zealander to reach the quarter-finals at Wimbledon was Chris Lewis in 1983, when he went on to make the final, losing to American great John McEnroe.
The only Kiwi to win the event is Anthony Wilding, a four-time champion in the pre-Open era with titles in 1910, 1911, 1912 and 1913, back when the defending champion had the advantage of automatically playing in the final the following year. The last time a New Zealander progressed past a grand slam quarter-final was at the 1989 Australian Open, when Belinda Cordwell got as far as the semifinals.
Cameron McMillan has been a sports journalist since 2003 and is NZME’s deputy head of sport. A career highlight was live-blogging the 2011 Rugby World Cup final from Eden Park (in a media box surrounded by French journalists).
