Sonay Kartal’s impressive breakthrough run in Beijing came to a difficult end as she was overpowered by Linda Noskova, who thrashed every last ball and played a stellar match to reach the semi-finals of the China Open with a comfortable 6-3, 6-4 win.
The defeat ends the most significant tournament of Kartal’s career to date as the 23-year-old Briton showed, with a series of excellent performances, that she has the game to trouble the best players in the world, reaching her first WTA 1000 quarter-final with a superb three-set win over world No 5 Mirra Andreeva, her first victory against a top-10 player.
