{"id":791002,"date":"2026-10-03T20:06:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T20:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/791002\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T20:06:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T20:06:15","slug":"china-open-sonay-kartal-wins-as-alexander-zverev-sets-up-novak-djokovic-clash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/791002\/","title":{"rendered":"China Open: Sonay Kartal wins as Alexander Zverev sets up Novak Djokovic clash"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kartal made the quarter-finals in Beijing in 2025 but had slipped down to 129 in the world after missing the majority of this season, including the past three Grand Slam tournaments.<\/p>\n

She retired injured from a last-16 clash against Rybakina at Indian Wells in March and did not return to competitive action until last month’s Billie Jean King Cup Finals.<\/p>\n

Yet after earning a comfortable win over Spain’s Andrea Lazaro Garcia on her return to tour duty at the China Open,<\/a> Kartal followed that up with a clinical performance in beating Wang.<\/p>\n

She produced 12 winners and made just 11 unforced errors, compared to her opponent’s 24, converting five of her 14 break points with some impressive groundstrokes.<\/p>\n

“I am super happy to play here and I think that shows in my tennis,” Kartal said in her on-court interview, as she recalled her run to last year’s quarter-final.<\/p>\n

“I’ve had a long time out but I am happy to make a return to this event – I am looking to equal or hopefully do better this year.”<\/p>\n

To do that, Kartal would have been preparing herself to face Rybakina, but the US Open champion was well below her best in a disappointing 6-3 4-6 3-6 defeat by unseeded Charaeva, who had never before faced a top 20 player on the WTA Tour.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Kartal’s British team-mate Harriet Dart produced an encouraging display in a three-set defeat by American 10th seed Iva Jovic.<\/p>\n

The 30-year-old British qualifier looked capable of causing an upset after claiming three breaks of serve in the opening set to charge into an early lead before eventually losing out 2-6 6-3 6-3 to the rising 18-year-old.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kartal made the quarter-finals in Beijing in 2025 but had slipped down to 129 in the world after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":791003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-791002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}