Kartal proud in defeat as British hopes end in Wimbledon women's singles

Sonay Kartal made her debut walk onto Centre Court as thunder rumbled, but her Wimbledon hopes were soon gone in a flash.

Kartal is rightly keen to accentuate the positives from a week to remember, which saw her reach the last 16 of a Grand Slam for the first time.

Her 7–6, 6–4 defeat to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova will mainly be remembered for a high-profile failure of the new automatic line-calling system, but that should be only a footnote to Kartal’s achievements in recent days.

Taking down the seeded Jelena Ostapenko, making a first appearance on Centre Court, leaving the All England Club with a ranking inside the world’s top 50 and swelling her bank account by £240,000 — it has been an honest week’s work in SW19.

“I’ve proved to myself I can go deep into Slams and beat some of the best players on tour,” said Kartal, who took to the court with her knee heavily strapped but insisted it was not a major issue.

“I’ll take a little rest for a week or two, but this gives me a lot of motivation. It’s not easy coming out on Centre Court as a British player, but I think I handled that well.

“I’m pretty devastated not to get the win. People were saying the draw had opened up, but she played like a seed from the very first point. I made a few mistakes at not ideal times and that was the only difference.

“It’s my first fourth round at a Slam, so I can be super proud about that when I take some time to reflect — because I’m playing some of my best tennis.”

Wimbledon’s decision to scrap the 147-year-old tradition of line judges in favour of Hawk-Eye technology has raised plenty of eyebrows, with British number ones Jack Draper and Emma Raducanu both questioning its reliability.

Pavlyuchenkova was serving at 4–4, advantage, when a Kartal shot landed well beyond the baseline. However, umpire Nico Helwerth refused to overrule the clearly incorrect call, insisting the point be replayed as the technology had failed.

Kartal went on to break her opponent’s serve.

“You took the game away from me,” fumed the former French Open finalist at the changeover. “You’ve stolen it.”

To her credit, Pavlyuchenkova showed remarkable restraint, ultimately winning the set — rightly hers — on a tie-break, her British rival paying the price for converting only three of ten break-point opportunities.

There are certainly questions to answer about how Hawk-Eye is being implemented. If an umpire cannot overrule a clearly bad call, they might as well be replaced too.

“I just thought also the chair umpire could take initiative. That’s why he’s sitting on the chair. He also saw it out — he told me after the match.

“They said the system was down, it was a human error and I understand that. It’s such a big match, a big event. I think since we already have automatic line calling and so much invested into this, we should probably look into something else to make it better.”

In the end, it was all immaterial. Pavlyuchenkova, a former world No 11 who has slipped outside the top 50, drew on her decade-plus of experience to end the home women’s singles challenge for another year.

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