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20-year-old Sonay Kartal has lavished praise on fellow Brit Emma Raducanu's unprecedented victory at the 2021 US Open. Raducanu's triumph scripted several new records as she made history as the first qualifier to ever win a Grand Slam title.
While speaking to the PA news agency, Kartal, a long-time rival of the 19-year-old on the junior circuit, admitted to having derived inspiration from Raducanu's title run. She revealed that it motivated her to believe that her own dreams are achievable.
"It has inspired me and I think I can speak for the others who grew up playing around her that it’s nothing but inspiration," Sonay Kartal said, "a little kick that what we’re all trying to achieve, it’s doable, it’s not a dream that’s so unachievable. It was motivation for all of us.”
Emma Raducanu and Sonay Kartal built a rivalry of their own while competing in the UK as young girls. The latter recalled how they grew up playing each other and that she would often run into Raducanu in the finals of national-level tournaments.
"We grew up playing each other,” the World No. 392 reminisced. “I think my earliest memory is maybe under-nines up until under-14s. We’d be in the same national tournaments and we’d always end up meeting each other in the finals and we’d alternate almost every week who won.”
Below is a clip of the duo engaged in an intense rally at the National Tennis Center in London back in 2011.
Emma Raducanu looking to grab her maiden win in Indian Wells
Emma Raducanu will be eyeing her second win of the season on her return to Indian Wells later this week. The teenager made her maiden appearance at the WTA 1000 event last October, but fell to the unseeded Belarusian Aliaksandra Sasnovich in the opening round.
On her Australian Open debut earlier this year, she managed a solitary win over Sloane Stephens before losing to Danka Kovinic in the second round.
The Brit went on to compete at the WTA 250 event in Guadalajara as the top seed. She was, however, forced to retire in the third set of her first-round match against Daria Saville due to a hip injury. She will now be hoping to recover in time ahead of her campaign at the upcoming BNP Paribas Open, which begins March 9.
