Britain’s Sonay Kartal missed out on what would have been the biggest title of her career as she faded in a gripping Wuhan Open final against French Open runner-up Maja Chwalinska.<\/p>\n
Kartal, 24, was bidding to lift the trophy in only her third event since returning from a six-month absence caused by a back injury.<\/p>\n
But an extraordinary week in China seemed to catch up with Kartal as she ran out of steam – physically and mentally – in a 2-6 6-4 6-2 defeat.<\/p>\n
Kartal was playing in just the 10th match of her impressive comeback and was attempting to become the first Briton to win a WTA 1,000 title since Johanna Konta in 2017.<\/p>\n
Ranked 170th in the world at the start of the event, Kartal reached Sunday’s final by seeing off a host of notable opponents, including current top-10 players and former major champions.<\/p>\n
However, Poland’s Chwalinska, who made a shock run to this year’s Roland Garros final, dragged Kartal into a brutal battle and ultimately got the better of it.<\/p>\n
Kartal dominated the first set and led by a break in the second before Chwalinska turned momentum in her favour.<\/p>\n
Chwalinska, 25, felt a few nerves as she closed in on her first WTA 1,000 title, but took her third championship point when Kartal hammered a forehand long.<\/p>\n
Despite losing the final, Kartal has enjoyed a transformational week which even she did not see coming.<\/p>\n
On Monday, she will climb to 50th in the world rankings – just below her career high – and become the British number one for the first time. She also earned prize money of about \u00a3290,000.<\/p>\n
Addressing her team before receiving the runners-up trophy, Kartal said: “It’s not the result we wanted today, but those three people in my box are why I’m here, healthy and back to fitness.<\/p>\n
“We’ve had an unbelievable week – not many people expected me to be here and bring the level I did.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain’s Sonay Kartal missed out on what would have been the biggest title of her career as she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":806729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-806728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806728","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=806728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/806729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}