{"id":453500,"date":"2026-02-04T15:10:42","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T15:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/453500\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T15:10:42","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T15:10:42","slug":"sonay-kartal-beats-lucky-loser-after-belinda-bencic-withdraws-in-abu-dhabi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/453500\/","title":{"rendered":"Sonay Kartal beats lucky loser after Belinda Bencic withdraws in Abu Dhabi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Great Britain&#8217;s Sonay Kartal beat lucky loser Renata Zarazua to reach the last eight of the Abu Dhabi Open after original opponent &#8211; and defending champion &#8211; Belinda Bencic withdrew through illness.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">World number nine Bencic became the first mother to win a WTA singles title since May 2023 when she beat Ashlyn Krueger in last year&#8217;s final just four months after returning from maternity leave.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Kartal, who came through two qualifying matches before beating Spain&#8217;s Cristina Busca in round one, was on court for just 57 minutes as she overcame Mexico&#8217;s Zarazua 6-0 6-3.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The British number two and world number 61 will face 20-year-old Czech Sara Bejlek in the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Fellow Briton Katie Boulter reached the last eight at the Ostrava Open with a straight-sets victory over Swiss fifth seed Viktorija Golubic.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Boulter, 29, dropped just two games in each set to set up a meeting with either fourth seed Rebecca Sramkova or Linda Fruhvirtova.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It is the first time she has won back-to-back main-draw singles matches since the Nottingham Open in June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Great Britain&#8217;s Sonay Kartal beat lucky loser Renata Zarazua to reach the last eight of the Abu Dhabi&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-453500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}