Sonay Kartal, the British No. 1 whose calm keeps outrunning her body

Sonay Kartal

Photo: si.robi / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Born	October 28, 2001 Sidcup
Occupation	Tennis Player
Awards	LTA Female Player of the Year

Jelena Ostapenko hit winner after winner past Sonay Kartal in the Wuhan Open semi-final and still could not take a set from her. Kartal saved set points in both of them, won two tie-breaks, and afterwards explained it plainly: she could see her opponent “getting a bit upset and emotional on the other side,” so she knew “it’s time for me to just knuckle down.” That calm is the most reliable thing in her tennis. Her body is the least reliable. Her career so far is the story of the first trying to outrun the second.

That week in China took her from a protected-ranking entrant ranked far outside the top hundred to the top of British women’s tennis, ahead of Katie Boulter, in only her second tour-level event after six months out with a stress fracture in her lower back. A few days later she pulled out of her next tournament with a sore right knee. Both facts belong in the same paragraph, because with Kartal they usually arrive together.

From Sidcup to the south coast

Kartal was born in Sidcup, on the south-east edge of London, on 28 October 2001, and grew up by the sea in Brighton and Hove, where she still lives and trains at the Pavilion & Avenue club in Hove. She has Turkish heritage through her father. She went to Saltdean Primary and Longhill High School and started playing at six, after watching her older brother hit balls.

Her climb was slow and almost entirely out of sight. Her first professional title came at a 15k ITF event in Antalya in late 2021, and she finished that year ranked 993rd. In 2022 she stacked up 25k titles in Birmingham, Glasgow and Nottingham and made her Grand Slam debut on a wildcard at Wimbledon, losing in the first round. That autumn she retired injured from an indoor event in Trnava, an early warning. She still closed the season at No. 198, almost 800 places higher than a year before.

The qualifier who kept arriving

The breakthrough came on grass. At Wimbledon 2024, ranked 295th and playing qualifying for the first time after two wildcard years, she beat the 29th seed Sorana Cîrstea and Clara Burel to reach the third round. Only one British woman in the Open Era had done that as a qualifier before her: Karen Cross, in 1997. Coco Gauff stopped her there. That September, again from qualifying, she won the Jasmin Open in Monastir, beating Rebecca Šramková in the final for her first WTA title and a place in the top 100.

The following season turned a promising qualifier into a regular. She entered Indian Wells as a lucky loser, beat Beatriz Haddad Maia for her first win over a top-20 player and reached the fourth round before world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka beat her. She won both her singles rubbers on her Billie Jean King Cup debut and at Wimbledon reached the fourth round of a major for the first time, with Ostapenko among her victims. That took her to a career-high No. 44. In Beijing she beat Mirra Andreeva, then the world No. 5, for her first top-10 win and a first WTA 1000 quarter-final. The LTA named her its female player of the year for 2025.

The footnotes to the headlines

Her best Grand Slam result is partly remembered for something she did not do. In that Wimbledon fourth round against Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, the electronic line-calling system had been accidentally switched off on one side of the court for a game. A Kartal forehand that landed clearly long at Pavlyuchenkova’s game point went uncalled, the umpire ordered the point replayed and Kartal broke for 5-4. Wimbledon later apologised to both players. Pavlyuchenkova told the umpire “You took the game away from me,” suggested the local player was being protected, and won in straight sets anyway. Kartal had nothing to do with the fault, but it became her match’s headline.

The British No. 1 ranking needs a footnote too. Her current points come from only nine tournaments. She overtook Boulter while Emma Raducanu was sidelined with a stress fracture in her lower leg, and Yahoo Sports argued that a player who missed half the season climbing past every compatriot says as much about the depth of British women’s tennis as it does about Kartal. The harder question is physical. Trnava in 2022, the back in 2026, the knee a week after Wuhan: each time her game has opened a new door, her body has been the thing that stopped her. Composure can save a set point. It cannot make up for the matches you never got to play.

The deep end

Her 2026 began well, with quarter-finals in Auckland and Abu Dhabi. Then, at Indian Wells in March, after wins over Emma Navarro and Madison Keys, she retired against Elena Rybakina in the fourth round with what turned out to be a stress fracture. “In the first month or so, I was at home in bed,” she told the BBC. She missed Miami, Roland Garros, Wimbledon and the US Open, and came back only at the Billie Jean King Cup Finals in Shenzhen, losing a close match to Marie Bouzková.

The choice that followed defines her. She could have rebuilt at smaller events. Instead she used her protected ranking on the WTA 1000 tournaments in China. “I decided to throw myself in the deep end and play the best players in the world,” she said. After a third round in Beijing, in Wuhan she beat Anhelina Kalinina, Belinda Bencic, Jasmine Paolini 6-2, 6-0, Elina Svitolina and then Ostapenko, who struck 50 winners by Sky Sports’ count and lost anyway, becoming the lowest-ranked WTA 1000 finalist since the format arrived in 2009 and only the second British woman, after Johanna Konta, to reach a final at that level.

The final against Maja Chwalińska showed both sides of her at once. Kartal took the first set 6-2 and broke early in the second. Then the rallies got longer, the legs got heavier, and Chwalińska won 2-6, 6-4, 6-2 in two hours and 43 minutes. “I had my chances and I think that’s maybe where the rust of six months off comes in,” Kartal said, without excuses.

The 650 points lifted her 121 places to No. 49 in the rankings published on 19 October 2026, high enough to enter the Australian Open directly without the protected ranking. In Wuhan she credited coach Ben Reeves, fitness coach Ian Aylward and physio Dani Gillanders: “Those three people in my box are why I’m here, healthy and back to fitness.” The next season will test whether her body can hold up to a full calendar for the first time, because her game already looks ready for one.

Tags: sports, athletes, tennis, Wimbledon, WTA, Wuhan Open, Maja Chwalińska, Katie Boulter, Sonay Kartal

Related People

Katie Boulter

Serena Williams

Aryna Sabalenka

Elena Rybakina

Maja Chwalińska

Naomi Osaka