{"id":584795,"date":"2025-11-21T13:39:27","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T13:39:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/584795\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T13:39:27","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T13:39:27","slug":"emma-raducanu-targeted-as-british-tennis-star-makes-10-word-comment-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/584795\/","title":{"rendered":"Emma Raducanu targeted as British tennis star makes 10-word comment | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tennis star Sonay Kartal has shared her admiration for British No.1 Emma Raducanu<\/a> as she looks to rise up the WTA rankings. Kartal has just finished the best season of her career – ending 2025 in the top 100.<\/p>\n

The Briton reached her maiden WTA 1000 quarter-final after beating world No.5 Mirra Andreeva<\/a> en-route at the China Open in October. The 24-year-old went on to lose out to runner-up Linda Noskova in straight sets.<\/p>\n

Kartal is the current British women’s No.2 as she continues to rise up the rankings. The London-born star featured in a well-known video from 2011 at the British National Tennis Centre, which showed a young Kartal winning a rally against Raducanu.<\/p>\n

But while Raducanu went on to rocket up the junior and ITF rankings, Kartal had to contend with numerous injuries. Now, she admits in an interview with The Telegraph<\/a> to having been inspired by Raducanu’s famous 2021 US Open win as the pair look to push each other in 2026.<\/p>\n

She said: “Obviously we watched it and it was an incredible couple of weeks for her. It gave us all a bit of extra firepower and just the proof that anything is possible.<\/p>\n

“It was super inspiring to watch someone that you’ve grown up with, that you were playing under-9 nationals with, lift the US Open trophy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kartal also shared her rankings goal in a 10-word message. She added: “I’d like to see myself breaking into the top 30.”<\/p>\n

The Briton suffered defeat in her maiden match at the US Open in August against Beatriz Haddad Maia. Both competitors strangely battled cramp though, despite Kartal’s difficulties, she managed to fight back from dropping the opening set to claim the second.<\/p>\n

Yet after experiencing cramping throughout her entire body, she surrendered the deciding set 6-1. Speaking following her defeat, she admitted to finding herself in a “dark place” during the encounter<\/a> as her body failed her.<\/p>\n

“It stings – it is super tough,” she said at the time. “I have never lost a match through cramp before ever. Where wasn’t I feeling it? I felt it in my calves, quads, hamstrings and the fingers on the tennis racquet.<\/p>\n

“My body wasn’t letting me do anything. You feel hopeless on the court. You are in such pain you go to a little dark place and try and get through it. You feel pretty helpless on the court.<\/p>\n

“My body didn’t let me finish it how I would like to have finished it. I don’t feel like it was a heat thing or a nerve thing. We will have to analyse everything that I eat and drink and see if we can make some changes.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tennis star Sonay Kartal has shared her admiration for British No.1 Emma Raducanu as she looks to rise…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[88733,1070,8100,79,1068,16,15,35779,11911],"class_list":{"0":"post-584795","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-british-tennis","9":"tag-emma-raducanu","10":"tag-sonay-kartal","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-tennis","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-wta-rankings","16":"tag-wta-tour"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115587971043401210","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584795","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=584795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}