Katie Boulter departed Centre Court late on Saturday night having been subjected to a level of discomfort that many others have been forced to endure during the past year of Elena Rybakina’s emergence.
The pressure that Rybakina placed on Boulter throughout her 57 minutes on court was immense. Her serve was vicious, precise and unimpeachable. The ball cannoned from her strings as she laid into forehands and backhands. Even at the end, when it seemed clear there would be no way back, Rybakina did not let off, breaking serve at the close. She left with a statement victory as her title defence picks up steam.
While Boulter’s defeat against Rybakina illustrated the gap between herself and the very best, it should not dim the satisfaction of an excellent grass-court season for the Briton.
Re-establishing her spot inside the top 100 after falling out of it in 2019 because of a stress fracture of her back has proven to be one of the biggest challenges of Boulter’s career, as she has struggled through injuries and inconsistency at lower-level events. Finally, during this grass season, she has achieved it. With her title in Nottingham and a second consecutive Wimbledon third round, the 26-year-old will rise from her ranking of No 125 before the grass-court season to No 71, provisionally.
The way she achieved this breakthrough is particularly noteworthy. Boulter defeated six top-100 players during last year’s grass-court season, including Karolina Pliskova, then No 7, in consecutive weeks. This year, however, her first top-100 win of the entire season came in her second round win against the No 99, Viktoriya Tomova.
During her run in Nottingham, Boulter did not face a single player ranked inside the Top 130 and four of her five opponents were Britons. But success in tennis is so often contingent on taking opportunities, beating lesser opponents and handling the pressure that comes with such encounters. Boulter performed incredibly well in her first WTA final. Then, in her first Wimbledon as British No 1, she handled two lower-ranked opponents with authority.
Instead of playing ITF events and the occasional qualifying round of a WTA, as she did last year, Boulter’s ranking will enable her to step up on to the WTA Tour and compete in main draws each week for greater points and prizes. She will face the intensity of playing against top players week after week, but there will also be more opportunity.
Having struggled with injuries for much of last year, Boulter played a limited schedule after Wimbledon, meaning that even as she rises to a career-high ranking of No 71, she still has massive room to improve. Of the 862 points she will have after this event, Boulter has just 119 to defend for the rest of the year. The Top 50 should be the logical next goal.
“It’s a really good opportunity for me to keep pushing my ranking up and really make a statement and play many more matches like today,” she said. “They’re the matches that I want to be playing. I want to compete against the best in the world, and I’m going to have to do that week in, week out.”
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More than anything, the aim should be for Boulter to become a player who can compete at the highest level all year round, across different surfaces and conditions. Her ability is undeniable. Her serve and forehand are potent enough that she can hang with most of the top 100, which she has shown on numerous occasions, but there is still significant room to improve with her coach, Biljana Veselinovic.
Despite the force of her strokes, they can often be too linear, flat and predictable. As illustrated by a supreme ballstriker such as Rybakina, who can crack open the best defences in the world, competing at the highest level will require her to attack with intelligence and adaptability, patiently building points and opening the court with width.
So far in her career, Boulter’s success has been too conditional on her circumstances. Playing in front of a supportive home crowd on grass or faster indoor courts in the Billie Jean King Cup has always afforded her the chance to rise to the big occasions and perform at her best. But there are another 40 weeks in the tennis season when she will try to produce a similar level of tennis. The coming months will reveal much more about her.
