Not everybody was able to enjoy Sonay Kartal’s run to the Wimbledon fourth round equally this summer. The last remaining Briton in the women’s singles draw, the breakout star with a throwback fashion sense was revelling in her newfound spotlight, but Kartal’s father, Muharrem, could barely bring himself to watch her debut on Centre Court.
“My parents hardly come because my dad gets too nervous. Even if I’m on the telly at home, he can’t sit and watch. He paces up and down the corridor and shouts, ‘What’s the score?’ to my mum in the other room,” Kartal says.
It has become a distinctly more familiar sight and ritual over the past 12 months. Kartal, who turned 24 on Tuesday, peaked at No44 in the world rankings after Wimbledon. She then claimed her first victory over a top-ten player, Mirra Andreeva, at the China Open last month — a win that Annabel Croft said would “send a few shockwaves around the [WTA] Tour”.
Kartal, now ranked No66, was beset by injuries throughout her teenage years and did not have LTA funding early in her professional career
PETER TARRY FOR THE TIMES
Kartal’s success has often been overshadowed by the focus on Emma Raducanu, but it has been a remarkably sharp upward trajectory for a player who was beset by injuries throughout her teenage years, struggled to break even after turning professional without funding, and was still ranked outside the top 1,000 when her former junior rival won the US Open in 2021.
“It was always tough thinking, ‘Am I actually going to be able to have a clear run [without injuries] and give myself the opportunity to try to make a living from tennis?’ ” Kartal says. “I definitely had micro-moments of, ‘Do I really want to spend my life doing this?’ But there are little parts of me that are super stubborn and I always believed that I had good potential. I knew if I didn’t commit to the pro route, I’d have a lot of regret later on.
“I’d say the first time I genuinely believed in myself, rather than just hearing other voices say that you’re talented, was Wimbledon last year [when she reached the third round], which is probably more recent than people would think. I think that was the actual moment where it was like, ‘OK, I can kind of see it now.’ ”
The goals, after a career-best season in which Kartal competed at all four grand-slam tournaments for the first time and earned nearly £1million in prize money, have adjusted accordingly. “I think getting into the top 30 is definitely doable, and I want to be consistently reaching the second week of the slams and WTA 1000 events,” she says.
It is a fantastic underdog story in more ways than one. Kartal still works with Julie Hobbs (née Pullin), a former professional turned coach at Pavilion & Avenue Tennis Club in Hove, and splits her time between there and the LTA’s National Tennis Centre in Roehampton. The partnership has endured since Kartal was six years old, when Hobbs finally coaxed her on to the court.
“My brother is five years older and he would play in squads there a couple of times a week,” she says. “Being the younger sister, you always want to copy your bother in everything, but I was super shy. The coaches would try to get me [to play] and I wouldn’t even look at them. I’d just sit on the bank and watch. It took about three months for Julie to get me to come on.”
Kartal was the last Briton remaining in the women’s singles as she reached the fourth round
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER BRADLEY ORMESHER
After Kartal fell over in the warm-up, she refused to play for another two months, but a family trip to Wimbledon the following year proved to be the seed of a dream. “I remember sitting on Centre Court, I had a bright pink hat on that I was wearing backwards. We watched [Simona] Halep and I ran down and got her towel. I thought it’d be so cool to be that person,” she says.
Kartal’s father, who owned a Turkish restaurant and a kebab shop in Brighton, built a concrete wall in the family’s back garden. After coming home from training, she would spend hours hitting balls against it and quickly became one of the country’s best juniors — an old video circulated during Wimbledon of Kartal and Raducanu, who is a year younger, playing against each other at the National Tennis Centre back in 2011. “I think from U9s to U14s . . . I would always play the Nationals and I think I won pretty much every age group back then,” she says.
But a persistent wrist injury then prevented Kartal from playing for almost two years. As others progressed, she was overlooked for financial support from the LTA and had to rely on her father’s modest income after turning professional in 2019. That occasionally meant travelling without her coach and sharing rooms with other players at early events in the likes of Turkey and Tunisia to cut costs.
“At that point, you’re definitely far from making a living in those kind of events, but winning some of them showed me I was going in the right direction and then I started to get the funding from the LTA, which propelled me forwards massively because it took off the financial stress of knowing I had to go and win a tournament to be able to break even,” she says.
Kartal reached the quarter-finals of last month’s China Open, claiming her first win over a top-ten opponent in the process
CHINA OPEN OFFICIAL 2025/VCG VIA GETTY IMAGES
“I came from a super normal upbringing. Nothing was ever given to me. I had to work for everything and the way that I’ve gone through my whole tennis journey, it’s shaped me into the person I am. I developed a lot of the personality traits that help me in big matches: the determination, the willingness to give my best, the mental strength of growing up and not being given things on a plate. My parents sacrificed 17 years’ worth of money and time to help me be in this position.”
Kartal was always tremendously consistent from the baseline, but at 5ft 4in — the shortest player in this year’s Wimbledon singles draw — she lacked the natural athleticism of many of her opponents. When the Covid pandemic hit in 2020, she trained twice a day in an attempt to put on muscle. “Before then, I viewed the gym as a bit of a chore, but it almost turned into a bit of a passion. I hadn’t typically been fast, but after lockdown I was lighter and more explosive and powerful on the court, and movement is actually now one of my biggest strengths,” she says.
Kartal climbed more than 600 places in the rankings in 2022, with Ben Reeves, also of Pavilion & Avenue, sharing more of the coaching responsibilities with Hobbs. “Those two probably know me better than my parents, I’ve spent so much time with them,” she says. “I think it’s pretty rare. Not many people can say they’ve had the same coaches for the past 17 years. It makes every win or achievement that much more special because you’ve done it with people that have sacrificed a heck of a lot for you and have believed in you since you were six years old.”
Barring a medical issue at the start of 2024, Kartal’s progress has been consistent and largely serene. Now ranked No66, she also remains distinctly down to earth and still lives at home in Brighton with her parents — and their American cocker spaniel — and trains at a local public gym.
In contrast to the often manicured images in tennis, she rarely wears make-up, prefers the comfortability of boxy retro outfits, and has a penchant for celebrating her achievements with tattoos. Kartal now has 15, with the newest additions being the number 329 — her “Colour Holder” after making her debut for Great Britain in the Billie Jean King Cup in April — and a thunder and lightning symbol, after a storm rumbled over SW19 just as she fulfilled her childhood dream by walking out on to Centre Court. It epitomises her relaxed demeanour that Kartal let the public choose what the latter tattoo would be, although she did ensure she had a veto.
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“There are a lot of creative people out there. Someone [designed] a tennis racket where the handle was a kebab. I liked the idea but I wasn’t getting that,” she says, laughing. Kartal adds that she is keen to mark milestones with more tattoos soon. After a belated and often embattled breakthrough, a new star of British tennis shouldn’t have to wait much longer.
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