In defeating Switzerland's Leonie Kung and winning her first-round match in qualifying at the WTA International event in Istanbul last week, 15-year-old Nikola Bartunkova accumulated enough points to earn a WTA Ranking. She becomes the first player born in 2006 to achieve the feat.

Here are five things you need to know about Nikola Bartunkova……

1) Bartunkova was a member of the all-conquering Czech Republic girls’ team which triumphed on home soil at the 2019 ITF World Junior Tennis Finals in Prostejov. Selected alongside Linda and Brenda Fruhvirtova, Bartunkova won four of the five matches she contested as she helped her team reach the final. Once there, the Czechs dispatched a highly-rated USA outfit to become the first girls’ team from their nation to win the ITF World Junior Tennis Finals since 2003.

2) The teenager is an all-round sports fan. While tennis may be her strongest suit and the sport she is pursuing the most, Bartunkova also used to play football competitively and has represented her school at floorball and table tennis. She is a keen basketball player also and, during the winter months, enjoys skiing.

3) Bartunkova has two ITF World Tennis Tour Juniors singles titles to her name. Both were won in 2019 on clay, while the first, claimed at J4 Prague, was secured in the city of her birth. Bartunkova’s other title came at J4 Budapest during a year in which she won 23 of the 28 singles matches she contested. Her most recent title was a doubles triumph alongside fellow Czech Nelly Knezkova at J2 Rakovnik in September 2020. Bartunkova and Knezkova defeated Polish duo Rozalia Gruszczynska and Pola Wygonowska in the final.

4) Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Petra Kvitova and Dominic Thiem are just some of the players which Bartunkova enjoys following on social media. However, she cited Stan Wawrinka as being one of the most amusing and entertaining during the last year.

5) Bartunkova featured in a charity tournament staged in the Czech Republic last year during the shutdown of the tennis calendar. She competed alongside some esteemed names and the likes of two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova, Karolina and Kristyna Pliskova, Marketa Vondrousova, Barbora Strycova, Katerina Siniakova, Barbora Krejcikova, Tereza Martincova, Linda Fruhvirtova and Russia’s Ekaterina Alexandrova.