İpek Soylu (born 15 April 1996) is a professional Turkish female tennis player. Soylu has won three doubles titles on the

WTA Tour The WTA Tour is a worldwide top-tier tennis tour for women organized by the Women's Tennis Association. The second-tier tour is the WTA 125K series, and third-tier is the ITF Women's Circuit. The men's equivalent is the ATP Tour. WTA Tour tou ...

, her biggest coming at the 2016 year-end Elite Trophy. She has also won 12 singles and 18 doubles titles on the ITF Circuit. On 31 October 2016, she reached her best singles ranking of world No. 151. On 17 April 2017, she peaked at No. 63 in the WTA doubles rankings. Her sole Grand Slam title as a junior came in 2014, when she partnered

Jil Teichmann Jil Belén Teichmann (born 15 July 1997) is a Swiss professional tennis player. She has been ranked by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) as high as world No. 21 in singles and No. 74 in doubles. She has won two singles titles and one doubles ...

of Switzerland to win the doubles title at the US Open. Playing for the

Turkey Fed Cup team The Turkey Billie Jean King Cup team represents Turkey in the Billie Jean King Cup tennis competition and are governed by the Türkiye Tenis Federasyonu. They currently compete in the Europe/Africa Zone of Group III. History Turkey competed in ...

, Soylu has accumulated a win–loss record of 13–10. She is also a member of the

Enkaspor Enkaspor ( tr, Enka Spor Kulübü) is a multi-sports club established in 1983 in Istanbul, Turkey by the Turkish construction conglomerate Enka Construction Co. Enkaspor's main activities are in athletics, water polo, tennis and swimming with 3 ...

tennis team.

Personal life and background

Soylu was born on 15 April 1996 in

Istanbul ) , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = 34000 to 34990 , area_code = +90 212 (European side) +90 216 (Asian side) , registration_plate = 34 , blank_name_sec2 = GeoTLD , blank_i ...

, Turkey. She began playing tennis at the age of six. Her favorite shot is forehand, while her favourite surface is

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay par ...

. Her favorite players are

Roger Federer Roger Federer (; born 8 August 1981) is a Swiss former professional tennis player. He was ranked world No. 1 by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for 310 weeks, including a record 237 consecutive weeks, and finished as the year-e ...

and

Li Na Li Na (born 26 February 1982) is a Chinese former professional tennis player. She achieved a career-high WTA ranking of world No. 2 on 17 February 2014. Over the course of her career, Li won nine WTA Tour singles titles including two Grand ...

Career

2016: Success in doubles: Elite Trophy title

In 2016, Soylu won her first three WTA Tour titles, all in the doubles discipline, the biggest coming at the Elite Trophy in Zhuhai where she partnered with

Xu Yifan Xu Yifan (; ; born 8 August 1988) is a professional tennis player from China. She reached a career-high ranking of No. 148 in singles, on 13 July 2015. Since October 2018, she has specialized playing in doubles. On 13 January 2020, she peaked ...

. That year, she also won two other doubles titles, one on home soil at the

İstanbul Cup The İstanbul Cup is a WTA tennis tournament held in Istanbul, Turkey, organised for professional female tennis players. It is classified as an International-level tournament on the WTA Tour. Held annually since May 2005, it was played on outdoo ...

and the other at the

Tashkent Open The Tashkent Open by Zeromax is a women's tennis tournament held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Held since 1999, this WTA Tour The WTA Tour is a worldwide top-tier tennis tour for women organized by the Women's Tennis Association. The second-tier tou ...

, partnering

Andreea Mitu Cristina-Andreea Mitu (born 22 September 1991) is a professional tennis player from Romania. On 8 June 2015, she achieved her career-high singles ranking of 68, and her best doubles ranking is world No. 69, reached on 24 October 2016. Mitu is ...

and

Raluca Olaru Ioana Raluca Olaru (born 3 March 1989) is a professional tennis player from Romania. The winner of 11 singles and 15 doubles ITF titles, Olaru reached one WTA singles final, at the 2009 Gastein Ladies,WTA TourPetkovic, Olaru Into Final(25 Jul ...

respectively. That same year, she also made her Grand Slam main-draw debut, after qualifying for the French Open. She drew wildcard

Virginie Razzano Virginie Razzano (born 12 May 1983) is a former French professional tennis player. She won two WTA Tour singles titles, both of them in 2007. Razzano reached her career-high WTA singles ranking of world No. 16 on 14 September 2009. She represen ...

in the first round and lost to the French veteran, in three sets.

2017

At Wimbledon, Soylu made her first Grand Slam match win, reaching the second round together with

Varatchaya Wongteanchai Varatchaya "Pias" Wongteanchai ( th, วรัชญา วงค์เทียนชัย; born 7 September 1989) is a former professional tennis player from Thailand. In her career, she won two doubles titles on the WTA Tour, as well as four ...

where they lost to

Chan Hao-ching Chan Hao-ching (; ; born September 19, 1993), also known as Angel Chan, is a Taiwanese professional tennis player. She is primarily a doubles specialist, having won 18 WTA, 2 WTA Challenger and 6 ITF titles in that discipline. Chan reached the ...

Monica Niculescu Monica Niculescu (born 25 September 1987) is a Romanian professional tennis player. She has been ranked by the Women's Tennis Association as high as 28 in singles and 11 in doubles. Niculescu has won several titles: three singles and ten double ...

. In August at the US Open, Soylu lost in the first round to

Carla Suárez Navarro Carla Suárez Navarro (; born 3 September 1988, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) is a Spanish former professional tennis player. A former top 10 singles player, she reached a career-high singles ranking of world No. 6 on 29 February 2016, and a b ...

Significant finals

WTA Elite Trophy

Doubles: 1 (1 title)

WTA career finals

Doubles: 3 (3 titles)

WTA Challenger finals

Doubles: 1 (1 runner–up)

ITF Circuit finals

Singles: 21 (12 titles, 9 runner–ups)

Doubles: 29 (18 titles, 11 runner–ups)

Junior Grand Slam finals

Girls' doubles: 1 (1 title)

References

External links

* * * 1996 births Living people Sportspeople from Adana Turkish female tennis players Enkaspor tennis players US Open (tennis) junior champions Grand Slam (tennis) champions in girls' doubles {{Top Middle Eastern female tennis players