Tennis Player Sonay Kartal Lost the Wuhan Final but Is British No. 1 After Her Gamble

Not long ago, Sonay Kartal could not stand at a sink and brush her teeth without, in her words, “being in agony.” Now she is the highest-ranked woman in British tennis. The coverage of her week in Wuhan files that leap under fairytale, and the fairytale ends where they usually do, with a brave loss in the final.

That reading misses the one thing Kartal actually controlled. She did not drift back into the top tier of the women’s tour. She chose the hardest door available, walked through it on a back that had kept her in bed, and the same bet that lifted her past every British rival found its limit in the third set of the final against Maja Chwalinska.

The deep-end decision

The injury was a stress fracture in her back. It struck at Indian Wells in March, after wins over Madison Keys and Emma Navarro, in a fourth-round match against Elena Rybakina that she could not finish. Then came the longest absence of her career: no French Open, no Wimbledon, no US Open. “In the first month or so, I was at home in bed,” she told the BBC. “Sometimes I had good days but there were also bad days where I wasn’t really able to walk without some form of pain.” In rehab, her team says, she “worked her socks off, 9-5 all the time.”

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When the back healed, she faced a real fork. She could ease in at smaller events against weaker fields. Or she could spend her protected ranking, the shelter the WTA gives players who have been out six months or more, on the WTA 1000 events in China, the tier directly below the majors. “I knew it would be a tough choice,” she said. “It’s very easy to train well but the match scenario is completely different. I decided to throw myself in the deep end and play the best players in the world.”

The deep end was full of names. Ranked 170th, she beat Anhelina Kalinina, then Belinda Bencic, the Tokyo Olympic champion. She took Jasmine Paolini apart 6-2, 6-0. She broke Elina Svitolina in the last game of a three-set quarter-final. In the semi-final, Jelena Ostapenko hit 50 winners past her, according to Sky Sports, and still could not win a set: Kartal saved set points in both of them and took two tie-breaks. Tennis Majors notes she became the lowest-ranked WTA 1000 finalist since the format arrived in 2009. She is only the second British woman to reach a final at that level, after Johanna Konta.

The trait that carried her, and the wall it hit

Ask Kartal what got her there and she points inward. “I think mentally, it is one of my biggest assets on the tennis court,” she told Sky Sports after the Ostapenko match. “I can maybe see her getting a bit upset and emotional on the other side, so I know at that point it’s time for me to just knuckle down.” The calm, she said, has “always been ingrained in me.”

For a set and a half of the final, the calm was enough. AFP counted three breaks of serve in a 45-minute opening set that she owned from the baseline. She broke again for a 2-0 lead in the second. Then the body started asking questions. The BBC reported that she sought medical advice when Chwalinska left the court for a short break, and that her physical level came under scrutiny at the start of the second set. Chwalinska, a counter-puncher, dragged her into far longer rallies than Ostapenko had. Kartal faced 13 break points in that set, saved 10 and still lost it after 71 minutes.

The third set was the bill arriving. A drop shot followed by a lob broke her for 3-2, and on Chwalinska’s third championship point a Kartal forehand flew long: 2-6, 6-4, 6-2 in two hours and 43 minutes. Kartal did not dress it up. “It was a very physical battle and I think I had my chances and I think that’s maybe where the rust of six months off comes in,” she said. It was the tenth match of her comeback. Composure can save a set point. It cannot hand you the miles your legs never ran.

British No. 1, by 55 points

The 650 runner-up points did the rest. In the WTA rankings published Monday, Kartal sits at No. 49, up 121 places and five spots from her career high. Katie Boulter, the previous British No. 1, is No. 58. The gap between them is 1,097 points to 1,042. Emma Raducanu is No. 109.

The bigger prize is the calendar. With her ranking restored after ten matches, Kartal no longer needs the protected ranking to enter events such as the Australian Open, which gives her, as the BBC points out, real choice over when and where she plays. Her first decision as British No. 1 was to withdraw from the Japan Open in Osaka, where she was due on court Tuesday. “My goal on the Asian swing was just to try to defend those points I had from last year and make the use of the protected ranking worthwhile,” she said. “I think I’ve gone above and beyond that.”

British tennis needs her fit. With Kartal missing three of the four majors, no British woman went past the second round of a Grand Slam this season. She has done it twice, both times at Wimbledon: the third round as a qualifier in 2024, the fourth round last year. Born in Sidcup and raised in Brighton and Hove, of Turkish descent through her father, she picked up a racket at six after watching her older brother play.

In Wuhan, Kartal paid tribute to 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,” she said. The deep end made her British No. 1 in a week. Staying there is a job for the three of them, a 55-point cushion and a schedule she now gets to write herself.

Tags: Wuhan Open, Maja Chwalińska, Katie Boulter, Sonay Kartal, WTA rankings

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