Sonay Kartal: The struggle, the victory and the hunger for more

Britain’s young tennis player Sonay Kartal has revealed that she is eager to ‘push’ and go higher in the WTA rankings after some impressive performances in the recent past. The 22-year-old recently lifted her first WTA title — Jasmine Open — where she defeated Rebecca Sramkova in the final in straight sets with a score of 6-3, 7-5.

That victory was special because it helped her achieve a career-best ranking of 96. The title was also special because Kartal started the year not knowing whether she would be able to take the court again, struggling with fitness concerns. However, she managed to return to the court and delivered some impressive performances, including the one recently that helped her lift the title. Other than winning this title, the current world number 101 registered 35 wins in just 40 matches this year.

The London-born star, was recently quoted in a BBC Sport report where she talked about how the injury earlier this year changed her perception about the life. Kartal also went on to state that while she has achieved her career-best ranking after winning the Jasmine Open but her objective remains to push even hard to achieve bigger things on the court.

"I had the worst start to a year which I could have imagined," she said."You don't really appreciate the feeling of being healthy until you're in that position of being in control of it. 100%, it changed my outlook. It's been a whirlwind. My first goal was to be on a match court, then when I got there it went to 'let's go for 150'. In one week in Tunisia I surpassed that and got into the top 100. Winning this title has not fully sunk in. People say 'you’ve reached the top 100, you can chill out'. No. I want to push on to the next thing and go even higher."