{"id":36290,"date":"2026-10-16T13:26:41","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T13:26:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wuhan-open-britains-sonay-kartal-beats-elina-svitolina-to-reach-semi-finals\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T13:26:41","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T13:26:41","slug":"wuhan-open-britains-sonay-kartal-beats-elina-svitolina-to-reach-semi-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wuhan-open-britains-sonay-kartal-beats-elina-svitolina-to-reach-semi-finals\/","title":{"rendered":"Wuhan Open: Britain’s Sonay Kartal beats Elina Svitolina to reach semi-finals"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Patience has been paramount for Kartal, who announced herself to the wider British public by reaching the fourth round at Wimbledon last year, as she dealt with a stress fracture in her back.<\/p>\n

Kartal had earned impressive victories over 2025 Australian Open champion Madison Keys and 2024 US Open semi-finalist Emma Navarro at Indian Wells in March, but was forced to retire from a fourth-round meeting with now world number one Elena Rybakina.<\/p>\n

The issue proved more serious than first thought, leading to the longest absence from competitive action of Kartal’s career.<\/p>\n

But she has returned to the WTA Tour playing like she has never been away.<\/p>\n

Known for her consistent hitting from the baseline, supreme athleticism and tenacity, Kartal added Ukraine’s Svitolina to her list of high-profile victories in Wuhan with a 6-2 2-6 6-4 triumph.<\/p>\n

Kartal beat Italian 15th seed Jasmine Paolini<\/a> – a Wimbledon and French Open finalist in 2024 – in the last 16, backing up the win over Swiss ninth seed Belinda Bencic – who won the Tokyo Olympic title in 2021 – in the second round. <\/p>\n

Since returning to competitive action little more than three weeks ago – when she represented Great Britain at the BJK Cup – Kartal has won six of her eight matches.<\/p>\n

Next up is 2017 French Open champion Je\u013cena Ostapenko, who came through a tense opening set to beat 11th seed Diana Shnaider 7-6 (8-6) 6-1.<\/p>\n

Kartal is only the second British player, after Johanna Konta, to reach a WTA 1000 semi-final since the format’s introduction in 2009.<\/p>\n

“It’s one of the best tennis weeks of my life – results-wise you could say it is the best,” Kartal said.<\/p>\n

“I’m very happy to be back at this level. It’s easy to come out and play a blinder in one match, but I’m happy I have kept this consistency.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Patience has been paramount for Kartal, who announced herself to the wider British public by reaching the fourth round at Wimbledon last year, as she dealt with a stress fracture in her back. Kartal had earned impressive victories over 2025 Australian Open champion Madison Keys and 2024 US Open semi-finalist Emma Navarro at Indian Wells […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36290"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36292,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36290\/revisions\/36292"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}