Sonay Kartal spent six months off the WTA Tour. It has taken her two matches in Beijing to look as though she never left.
The 24-year-old beat 31st seed Wang Xinyu 6-3, 6-2 in one hour and 20 minutes on Saturday to reach the last 32 of the China Open, a second successive year in the third round at the WTA 1000 event where she made her breakthrough 12 months ago. Hours earlier, top seed Alexander Zverev needed only 55 minutes to dismantle China’s Juncheng Shang 6-0, 6-3, setting up the quarter-final the draw had pointed towards all week: a Sunday meeting with Novak Djokovic, who has never lost a match in Beijing in 31 attempts.
Kartal picks up where she left off
Kartal has not played a tour-level tournament since March, when she retired against Elena Rybakina in the fourth round at Indian Wells with a lower back injury. The withdrawals piled up from there — Miami, the French Open, Wimbledon — and her ranking slid from a career-high 44th in July 2025 to 129th. Her only competitive tennis before Beijing came at September’s Billie Jean King Cup Finals in Shenzhen, where she lost to Marie Bouzkova.
The rust has not shown. Kartal opened with a 6-2, 6-3 win over Spanish qualifier Andrea Lazaro Garcia in 74 minutes, then controlled a higher-ranked opponent from the baseline against Wang, winning 35 of 64 return points and breaking three times in the second set. She sealed it on her first match point at 5-2 after a 15-shot rally.
“I am super happy to play here and I think that shows in my tennis,” Kartal said.
The affection is earned. Beijing is where Kartal beat then world No. 5 Mirra Andreeva last year for her first top-10 win and reached a maiden WTA 1000 quarter-final, the run that made her the LTA’s 2025 female player of the year. She arrives this time with those points to defend and almost no ranking to protect.
Her reward was supposed to be Rybakina. Instead she faces Armenia’s Alina Charaeva, ranked 118th, after the world No. 1 and US Open champion lost 3-6, 6-4, 6-3 in the second round, citing foot trouble. Rybakina became only the second woman to lose her first match while ranked No. 1, after Naomi Osaka in 2019. Elsewhere in the British contingent, Harriet Dart fell to 10th seed Iva Jovic 2-6, 6-3, 6-3 and Katie Boulter lost to Karolina Muchova 7-6 (3), 6-1.
Zverev’s No. 1 push meets Beijing’s immovable object
Zverev’s demolition of Shang, ranked 250th, was the least complicated hour of his week — nine aces, no break points conceded, a first set in which the Chinese wildcard did not win a game. The German has not dropped a set in Beijing and arrived on an eight-match winning streak after the best season of his career: a first major on clay at Roland Garros, the Wimbledon final, and the US Open title against Ben Shelton in four sets.
The maths behind his fortnight matters more than the scorelines. Jannik Sinner, the world No. 1, has withdrawn from the Shanghai Masters with a knee injury. Win the China Open and Shanghai, and Zverev takes the top ranking for the first time.
“I think it’s no secret that it’s a goal, for sure,” he said. “I know what I’m playing for.”
Standing in the way is the one record in Beijing nobody has dented. Djokovic has won the China Open six times, most recently in 2015 against Rafael Nadal, and is 31-0 at the tournament after recovering from a set down to beat home favourite Bu Yunchaokete 4-6, 7-6 (2), 6-2 on Friday — a win that drew him level with Nadal’s 31-match start at Roland Garros and made him, at 39 years and four months, the oldest man to reach an ATP 500 quarter-final since the category was created in 2009.
Djokovic took treatment around his rib area for the second match running, and he has not won a title in 2026, a season that would end a run of 20 consecutive years with at least one trophy. He leads Zverev 9-5 in their head-to-head, and won their most recent meeting in the Australian Open semi-finals.
What it means from here
- Kartal: a win over Charaeva would equal last year’s Beijing quarter-final and start rebuilding a ranking that currently guarantees her nothing beyond qualifying draws in 2027.
- Zverev: Beijing is not a mandatory event, but it is where the ranking race realistically begins with Sinner absent in Shanghai.
- Djokovic: a seventh Beijing semi-final would be a tournament record, and this draw is the most favourable route to a title he has had all year.
- The women’s draw: with Rybakina gone, the top half has been torn open for players ranked outside the top 100.
Medvedev, the third seed, moved through with a 6-4, 6-3 win over Jan-Lennard Struff, while fifth seed Alex de Minaur and Andrey Rublev both needed three sets. Sunday’s headline act, though, is settled: the best season on the men’s tour against the best record at this tournament.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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