Chwalinska wins Wuhan for a first tour title

One. That is the number of tour titles Maja Chwalinska has, and she won it on Sunday at the Wuhan Open. The 25-year-old, ranked 22 and seeded 16, beat Sonay Kartal 2-6, 6-4, 6-2 after losing the first set, and needed three match points to finish it.

The final was level on every line that counts. Chwalinska and Kartal each won 91 of the 182 points played, 50 percent apiece. Each put in 75 or 76 percent of first serves, each hit one double fault, and neither hit an ace. Chwalinska won 14 games to Kartal's 12, and that margin was the whole difference between a title and a runner-up trophy.

Kartal took the first set 6-2 with three breaks, one of them at 1-2 to go 1-3 ahead and another at 2-5 to close it. Chwalinska answered in the second. After dropping serve in the second game she broke back at once, broke again at 3-3 to lead 4-3, and broke once more at 4-4 to lead 5-4 and serve it out 6-4. In the third she broke for 3-2 and again for 5-2, and the title came on her third match point. Kartal saved two. Chwalinska converted 6 of 16 break points, Kartal 5 of 13. At the net Chwalinska won 6 of 9 points, Kartal 2 of 9.

Chwalinska had come back from a set down before. In the second round she lost the first set 6-1 to Marie Bouzkova, then won the next two 6-1, 6-1. In the third round she beat Iva Jovic, world no 11 and the no 10 seed, 6-4, 6-1, and in the semi-final she beat Iga Swiatek, world no 9 and the no 7 seed, 7-5, 6-1. Kartal arrived in the final ranked 170, with one tour title, Monastir in 2024. The two had never met before, so the head-to-head now reads 1-0 to Chwalinska.

Match tale, 18 October 2026, sources: Wuhan Open, api-tennis