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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
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Pa Sport

China Open: Sonay Kartal's fairytale run ended in quarter-finals by Linda Noskova

Sonay Kartal was knocked out of the China Open following a straight sets defeat to Linda Noskova in the quarter-finals.

In the previous round, Kartal produced the biggest victory of her career with a win over Mirra Andreeva to reach her first last-eight contest at a WTA 1000 event.

However, despite a battling performance from the Briton, Noskova claimed a 6-3 6-4 victory in an hour and 10 minutes to book her spot in the semi-finals.

Following a tricky start, Kartal fought back to level the opening set at 3-3, but had her serve broken in the seventh game and the world number 27 stormed ahead to clinch the set.

Kartal broke Noskova's serve early in the second set to go 2-0 up, but another tight encounter followed and Noskova was able to pull ahead to see out the win.

Despite her loss, Kartal believes she is "on the right path" following a strong showing in Beijing.

"I'm obviously disappointed with the result, but there were times where she played lights out tennis and sometimes you've just got to let that kind of opponent ride the wave," Kartal said.

"The scoreline was closer than it felt like playing, at least. Had the chances but got broken. Not overly pleased with the performance today, but regardless I had an incredible week this week.

"I feel like it's the first time I've really brought it to a match court, the new kind of style I want to play and I've been trying to get myself to do and that I've been working on the practice court.

"So I think to be able to do it and to have the results so convincingly that I did in the previous rounds, I think I'm on the right path. I think it's given me a lot of confidence.

"Regardless of it being near the end of the year, I think I've proved to myself that if I just add one or two more things into my game, I can take my level to a top-10 level and a much higher level than I'm currently ranked at."

Victory means that Noskova will face either Emma Navarro or Jessica Pegula in the semi-finals.

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