Britain’s Sonay Kartal reached the first WTA Tour final of her career when opponent Eva Lys retired through illness at the Jasmin Open Tunisia.
Kartal came through qualifying in Monastir and has enjoyed a career-best week, which could culminate in her maiden main tour title when she takes on Rebecca Sramkova in the final on Sunday.
Kartal, a former junior rival of Emma Raducanu, was only on court for 24 minutes before German Lys called it a day trailing 5-1.
The 22-year-old from Brighton will now aim to join Katie Boulter as a British WTA Tour winner this season, while victory would see Kartal break into the top 100 for the first time.
“Obviously no-one wants to win a match like that,” said Kartal. “She’s a super nice girl, which makes it even tougher. Obviously I’m happy to be in the final but it’s definitely not the way I would have liked to have won today.”
It will also be a first WTA Tour final for Slovakian Sramkova, and Kartal added: “I’m sure we’re both going to be feeling a bit heavy, we’re both going to be a bit nervous, but ultimately it will be who can put on the best performance on the big stage.”
It has been a standout summer for Kartal, who reached the third round of Wimbledon as a qualifier before winning two lower-tier tournaments in the UK and making the final round of qualifying at the US Open.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here