{"id":4099,"date":"2026-10-16T09:35:40","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T09:35:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/?p=4099"},"modified":"2026-10-16T09:35:40","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T09:35:40","slug":"kartal-upsets-svitolina-to-reach-wuhan-semi-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/?p=4099","title":{"rendered":"Kartal upsets Svitolina to reach Wuhan semi-finals"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sonay Kartal’s winning streak following a long injury lay-off continued as she sealed a hard-fought victory over fifth seed Elina Svitolina in the quarter-finals of the Wuhan Open.<\/b><\/p>\n

The 24-year-old Briton, who missed more than six months with a stress fracture in her back, beat Ukrainian Svitolina 6-2 2-6 6-4 to mark her sixth win in eight matches since returning from injury.<\/p>\n

It was another eye-catching performance by Kartal, who defeated Italian 15th seed Jasmine Paolini and Swiss ninth seed Belinda Bencic in the previous rounds.<\/p>\n

She will face 2017 French Open champion Je\u013cena Ostapenko, who came through a tense opening set to beat 11th seed Diana Shnaider 7-6 (8-6) 6-1, in her first WTA 1000 semi-final on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Kartal is only the second British player, after Johanna Konta, to reach a WTA 1000 semi-final since the format’s introduction in 2009.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Speaking on court after her victory, Kartal said she knew “what a great fighter” world number six Svitolina is, so she “was never safe” in the match.<\/p>\n

“It was solid composure from me throughout,” she added. “It’s breaking new ground for me this week.<\/p>\n

“I love playing here and on this court. The atmosphere was amazing, so big thank you to the crowd.”<\/p>\n

Kartal had not dropped a set during her run to the quarter-finals at Wuhan, and she broke Svitolina early in the first to start on a positive note.<\/p>\n

Svitolina then called for a medical timeout for treatment on her right arm, but she came back strong to take the second set 6-2 and send the last-eight tie to a decider.<\/p>\n

The two players were evenly matched in the third set but it was Kartal, using a protected injury ranking to play, who managed to break Svitolina’s serve at 5-4 and book her place in the last four.<\/p>\n

In the other quarter-finals, Polish 16th seed Maja Chwalinska faces Greek Maria Sakkari, while American Ann Li takes on six-time Grand Slam winner and seventh seed Iga Swiatek.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sonay Kartal’s winning streak following a long injury lay-off continued as she sealed a hard-fought victory over fifth<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":4100,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4099"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4101,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4099\/revisions\/4101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}