ROEHAMPTON, London — Tennis players are often defined by the flag next to their name. It’s the first detail fans and media notice, especially with unfamiliar names, and it can shape their narrative and personal brand for years to come.

Tennis is an international sport in an increasingly globalized world, and its history is full of stars who’ve shown that nationality can be fluid — whether shaped by politics, like Martina Navratilova, or dual heritage, like Naomi Osaka. This year, Daria Kasatkina began competing under the Australian flag, citing limited options after speaking out on political issues and coming out as gay. Meanwhile, junior star Tyra Caterina Grant has shifted her representation from her father’s country, the United States, to her mother’s, Italy.

As second-round play at Wimbledon qualifying gets under way, a number of players encapsulate this as well. Raluka Serban was born and raised in Romania, but is now trailblazing for Cyprus after moving there in 2011. Earlier this year in Bogota, the 28-year-old became the first player representing Cyprus to win a WTA main-draw match. After defeating Wang Xiyu 6-4, 6-2, she’s now one win away from becoming the first Cypriot woman to reach a Grand Slam main draw.

That match will be against Carson Branstine, who outlasted Bianca Andreescu 7-6(3), 4-6, 6-1 in a tightly contested battle watched by fellow players Whitney Osuigwe, Elsa Jacquemot, Hailey Baptiste and a pregnant Anna Karolina Schmiedlova. Branstine became lifelong friends with Andreescu after choosing to represent Canada, her mother’s homeland, as a 16-year-old instead of the U.S.

Elsewhere, Joanna Garland continued her strong form by defeating 2024 junior champion Renata Jamrichova 7-5, 6-1. Garland became the eighth player from Chinese Taipei to compete in a major main draw after qualifying for Roland Garros last month, but her Wimbledon debut is still homecoming of sorts. The 23-year-old lived in the British town of Stevenage until age 10, and as recently as 2023, switching to represent the United Kingdom was still a possibility.

Both Branstine and Serban lacked the resources to pursue tennis careers at home.

“When I got the opportunity [from Tennis Canada], my parents didn’t have the means to pay for my tennis,” Branstine said. Her choice to switch nationalities was made easier by the culture of camaraderie that she found in Montreal.

“They’re really like a family,” she said. “All the players — not just me and Bianca — get along really well, men and women. We’re all friends with each other, we all support each other. Unfortunately, I think that’s rare in a lot of countries.”

While Branstine’s switch came after an official offer from a federation, Serban’s story was slightly different. She had “no money, no support, no funding, no sponsorships” in Romania — but when she was 14, her family was promised financial backing by an individual in Cyprus. However, after the family emigrated and that plan fell through, she was left with even fewer resources.

“My parents had sold everything in Romania,” she said. “We had nothing to go back to. But my dad said, ‘We can never look back — only forward.'”

Serban started to give tennis lessons and spar with local children to earn money to travel to tournaments, and after a few years came on to the Cyprus Tennis Federation’s radar. They have supported her since and enabled her to work for several years with Yiannos Hadjigeorgiou, the former coach of Marcos Baghdatis — the best player in the country’s history. 

“He built my game from the bottom up,” Serban said, citing her powerful serve in particular.

Serban even discovered she shares a birthday with 2006 Australian Open finalist Marcos Baghdatis — a coincidence she sees as fitting, given that she now considers herself equally Cypriot and Romanian. Having lived in Cyprus for half her life, Serban has fallen in love with the food, the safety she feels and above all, “the beautiful sea.”

As a child in Stevenage, Garland’s family already had links to Taiwanese tennis. Her father had been a member of the same club as Chuang Chia-Jung, the former doubles No. 5, and the family would host her between Roland Garros and Wimbledon every year.

“It was really inspiring,” Garland said. “She’s so lovely. She was always really humble and took the time to speak with us kids.”

But Garland’s eventual move to Taiwan wasn’t specifically for tennis reasons. Instead, her family wanted to immerse her and her siblings in their mother’s culture.

“We couldn’t even speak Mandarin,” Garland said. “The plan was to stay for six months, and we ended up staying for five years as a family. They then moved back to the UK, and I finished high school in Taiwan.”

In Taiwan’s educational system, which placed talented athletes in a separate class, Garland went from playing casually with little thought of a future in the sport to training daily, under far stricter coaches than she had experienced before. At the same time, she was no longer excelling in school — as she had in Britain — while adjusting to a new language.

“If we hadn’t moved to Taiwan, I would have probably stopped playing tennis,” she said. “Maybe I would play for fun once or twice a week. Both countries are quite different. There’s not much structure in Taiwan, but the environment is good because it’s competitive and tennis is very accessible there — it costs nothing to play.”

Both Serban and Garland speak passionately about giving back to the sport in the countries they now live in — not just in terms of representing it in pro tennis, but helping develop it once they’ve hung up their racquets. Garland, who feels she’s taken the best from both sides of her heritage, wants to bridge a cultural gap that she sees as preventing Taiwanese children from fulfilling their athletic potential.

“It’s always, ‘You’re not doing well enough, it’s so tough to make it as a pro, you’re not gonna do it, it costs too much money,'” she said. “There’s just always a reason why you can’t do it. But actually, there’s a lot of talent there. I think the kids work really hard and they’re very polite, they’re very grounded. They just need to be given a lot more belief.”