Sonay Kartal produced one of the greatest turnarounds in Wimbledon history to reach the fourth round for the first time in her career – and bank \u00a3240k in the process. The British star had found herself 3-0 down in the opening set to French rival Diane Parry. But Kartal refused to panic – and reeled off an astonishing nine games on the spin to leave her opponent shell-shocked on Court One.<\/p>\n
And it was too much for the world No.48 to cope with, as Kartal closed out a sensational 6-4, 6-2 triumph to make it into the second week. Kartal had defeated 20th seed Jelena Ostapenko and Viktoriya Tomova<\/a> to reach the third round for the second successive year.<\/p>\n She appeared to be thriving at SW19, continuing her impressive rise through the rankings in the last 12 months. But French qualifier Parry promised to provide a stern test.<\/p>\n Parry had beaten 12th seed and world No.15 Diana Shnaider to set-up this Court One clash with her British rival. She also possessed a powerful forehand and sumptuous, slicing back hand.<\/p>\n Qualities she used to good effect to break Kartal’s opening service game and charge into a 3-0 lead. The omens didn’t look great for the home favourite.<\/p>\n But Kartal showed she is made of strong stuff, and launched a blistering fightback which saw her break Parry in the seventh game to get the set back on serve.<\/p>\n And it was the start of a stunning run which saw her go on to win five straight games, culminating in Parry smashing a simple forehand into the net on break point to concede the first set 4-6.<\/p>\n A set which had looked out of reach to Kartal just 40 minutes earlier. And if Parry thought the break might give her the chance to regroup, she thought wrong.<\/p>\n Kartal broke in the first game of the second set, held serve, then broke Parry again to go 3-0 up. She had now won eight games in a row. She then made it nine, and the next round was well within sight.<\/p>\n Parry finally held serve to stop the bleeding at 1-4, but way too much damage had already been done. There was no way back for Parry, and Kartal finished the job in style, before raising both hands to the skies.<\/p>\n Kartal was 864th in the world three years ago, but is now on the cusp of breaking into the top 50.<\/p>\n The 23-year-old has 14 tattoos and had promised to get another one, Wimbledon<\/a> related, if she got this far. And with a guaranteed career-high pay day of \u00a3240,000 now in the bank, she can afford one.<\/p>\n Because Kartal is making her mark at these Championships, in more ways than one.<\/p>\n To be the first to receive the latest Wimbledon<\/a> news, join our WhatsApp community<\/a> or Wimbledon newsletter<\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sonay Kartal produced one of the greatest turnarounds in Wimbledon history to reach the fourth round for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237733,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[8100,79,1068,31635,16,15,5068],"class_list":{"0":"post-237732","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sonay-kartal","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-tennis","11":"tag-tennis-section","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-wimbledon"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114795679904727119","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}