{"id":535267,"date":"2026-03-12T09:54:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T09:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/535267\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T09:54:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T09:54:08","slug":"indian-wells-sonny-kartals-run-to-round-four-ended-by-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/535267\/","title":{"rendered":"Indian Wells: Sonny Kartal&#8217;s run to round four ended by injury"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Britain&#8217;s Sonay Kartal says it was &#8220;one match too many&#8221; as a lower back injury forced her retirement from a fourth-round Indian Wells match against world number three Elena Rybakina.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Receiving physio treatment between games, Kartal lost the first set to the Kazakh 6-4.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Then, in clear discomfort as she trailed 4-3 in the second having been broken when she stretched for a return, she made her way to the net to shake hands.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 24-year-old had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/tennis\/articles\/cz0g2xee0yzo\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">battled the problem through the tournament<\/a> and said she had to &#8220;pull the plug&#8221; on Wednesday as the pain got more intense the further the match went on.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;As athletes you are super in-tune with your body, and I&#8217;ve had it pretty much the whole event, so I kind of knew that I could keep pushing,&#8221; Kartal told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;But today it was unfortunately one match too many.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;[I played] a super-tough opponent, so you need to be at your best. I was far from that but still managed to make it competitive.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Kartal, ranked 54, had become the first British woman to twice reach the fourth round in California.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain&#8217;s Sonay Kartal says it was &#8220;one match too many&#8221; as a lower back injury forced her retirement&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-535267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}