The New Arab
7/4/2026
Turkish tennis player Zeynep Sönmez’s used a watermelon-design ‘string dampener’ to get around the tournament’s ban on watermelon pins in the Wimbledon tennis tournament.
Sönmez, ranked 51 in global women’s tennis and Turkey’s highest-ever ranked women’s player, said:
“I used to wear a pin. Tournaments no longer allow me to wear it. We had a discussion with the organizers because the Ukrainian flag is allowed but Palestine is not. They ultimately told us they definitely would not allow it … I can use the vibration dampener and they can’t object to that. That’s why I put the watermelon symbol on my racket”.
The gesture angered Pro-Israel groups, with the Campaign against Antisemitism claiming that the watermelon means the “destruction of the Jewish state”.
