Sonay Kartal suffers defeat in rainy Australian Open debut amid automated line calling controversy as Brits get off to losing start in Melbourne

Not much went right for Sonay Kartal on her Australian Open debut. First she had to wait four hours before her race started, and then another fifteen minutes before water stopped seeping through the holes in the track.

She lost a point after a ball was called from another court and was eventually soundly defeated by Spaniard Jessica Bouzas Maneiro.

Melbourne was drenched in rain yesterday, so the British No. 3’s match started in the evening instead of the afternoon. Once the court staff finished cleaning up the water bubbling through the small holes in the surface, they got to work.

A curious incident occurred in the second game of the match, which illustrated one disadvantage of fully automated calling. Bouzas Maneiro hit a serve close to the line and both she and Kartal thought it had been called – before realizing the call had actually come from the disembodied voice on the adjacent court, rather than their own.

“It’s one of the more difficult things I find not having line judges,” Kartal said. “(The automated calls) all sound the same.”

Kartal was outclassed here by the number 54 in the world and lost 6-1, 7-6. “Disappointed with the result and also quite disappointed with the performance,” Kartal said. ‘It was definitely not how I expected myself to play.

The first lap clash included a curious incident that occurred as a result of fully automated line calls

‘But it is a credit to her that she came out with fire in that first set. It was difficult, she plays a lot like me in some ways: spinny forehand, gets a good whip from the ball. It was hard to play against someone like me.”

Kartal said before the tournament that she is looking to add a more aggressive touch to her game — which is built on looping, spinny groundstrokes.

If she wanted an example of how she wants to play, she could do a lot worse than rewatch Bouzas Maneiro’s performance in the first set, full of fire and power.

“When you play against someone like that, when you’re that far behind the baseline, you give him all the angles,” she said. “So looking back now, I definitely could have been closer to the line and given myself a better chance.

“I need to get better at switching back and forth between the two: the more aggressive and the spinner-like forehand.”

A losing start to the Australian Open for the British contingent, but there were still six raiders to go: Jodie Burrage and Jack Draper at night, Jacob Fearnley in the morning; Emma Raducanu, Katie Boulter and Cam Norrie on Tuesday.