New Zealand tennis player Lulu Sun has seen her WTA world singles ranking move to a new career-high of No 41.
This comes after her defeat in the final of the WTA 500 tournament in Monterrey, Mexico on Saturday (Sunday NZ Time) and her spectacular run over the past few months, which included reaching the Wimbledon semifinals.
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Sun was beaten in the Monterrey final by Linda Noskova and now faces Italian Lucia Bronzetti in the first round at the US Open in New York on Monday (Tuesday NZT), a match which is equal parts winnable and losable.
Although 23-year-old Sun will be tired, she will also be confident from her success which had her ranked at No 123 prior to Wimbledon and now two months later is inside the top-50.
Sun is the first New Zealand player to compete in the US Open singles since Marina Erakovic in 2015. The Te Anau-born player is just two spots off Erakovic's career-high of No 39.
Her match is scheduled for last on Court 11 on day one at Flushing Meadows.
Meanwhile, world No 1 doubles player Erin Routliffe is confident ahead of the start of the US Open.
She is teaming up with Canadian Gaby Dabrowski as top seeds and will face fellow Canadian Leylah Fernandez and Kazakh Yulia Putintseva in the first round.
Routliffe said there was expectations with being top seeds, but that went with the territory of being champions
"I don't pay attention to the rankings, but it shows that all the hard work has paid off. I'm 29 years old and it's 25 years of hard works has come through to world No 1 and the top ranking too," said Routliffe.
In the men's doubles, Kiwi Michael Venus and Brit Neal Skupski are the eighth seeds and play the French pair of Hugo Gaston and Gregoire Jacq in the first round.
Marcus Daniell will play the last Grand Slam of his career before retiring when he teams with Mexican Miguel Reyes-Varela against India's Sriram Balaji and Guido Andreozzi from Argentina.
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