Zeynep Sonmez became the first Turkish player to win a match at the Madrid Open, after she defeated wildcard and home favourite Carlota Martinez Cirez, 7-5, 6-2, in the first round.<\/p>\n
Sonmez<\/a>, who has enjoyed a strong 2026 so far, reaching the Australian third round and becoming the first Turkish woman in the Open Era to win a match there, is currently sitting at a career-high ranking of 67, and showed her vast improvement against the Spaniard.<\/p>\n There were seven breaks of serve in a topsy-turvy first set, before Sonmez saved three set points at 4-5, 0-40 to eventually take the opener. She had a far more straightforward time in the second set, sealing the win in an hour and 53 minutes<\/a>.<\/p>\n Alexandra Eala<\/a> also booked her spot in the second round, when she claimed a comfortable 6-3, 6-3<\/a> victory over former French Open finalist Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova<\/a>.<\/p>\n It is the third year in a row that Eala has won her opening match in Madrid, but the Filipino has never made it past round two. 19th seed Elise Mertens<\/a> now awaits.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Elena Gabriela Ruse<\/a>, who reached the first WTA 500 semi-final of her career just under two weeks ago in Linz, had to dig deep to see off Antonia Ruzic<\/a>, 6-3, 4-6, 6-0<\/a>.<\/p>\n However, there was no such luck for Eva Lys<\/a>, who fell to a 6-4, 6-3<\/a> loss to Shuai Zhang<\/a>. The German has struggled to find her best form after picking up an injury at the Australian Open, with Zhang ending a six-match losing streak.<\/p>\n Daria Kasatkina<\/a>‘s tough 2026 continued with a heartbreaking 6-3, 3-6, 7-6(13)<\/a> defeat at the hands of Daria Snigur<\/a>. Kasatkina squandered four match points before succumbing in the 28-point final set tiebreak.\u00a0<\/p>\n Over on the men’s side of the tournament, 2014 US Open champion Marin Cilic<\/a> secured a fine win over Zizou Bergs<\/a>, coming from a set down to triumph 4-6, 6-3, 6-4<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The 37-year-old will now face Joao Fonseca<\/a> in the second round – a player 18 years his junior.<\/p>\n 2021 runner-up, Matteo Berrettini<\/a>, was handed a 6-3, 6-4<\/a> loss by 20-year-old Dino Prizmic<\/a>, and will now drop out of the ATP top 100 as a result.<\/p>\n Other winners on Wednesday included Hubert Hurkacz<\/a>, Karolina Pliskova<\/a>, Yulia Putintseva<\/a>, Katie Boulter<\/a>, Sofia Kenin<\/a> and Katerina Siniakova<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zeynep Sonmez became the first Turkish player to win a match at the Madrid Open, after she defeated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-601226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}