Katie Boulter has broken into the world’s top 30 after scoring the biggest triumph by a British woman since Emma Raducanu won the US Open.
In a spectacular week in San Diego, Boulter overcame five successive top-40 opponents to lift the title and confirm her position as one of the most in-form players on the WTA Tour this season.
Boulter starts the new week as the world No 27 – the highest ranked Briton of either gender. Few would have predicted this when she entered last summer’s grass-court season at No 125, but her maiden tournament win in Nottingham last June set her on a sharp upward trajectory.
Boulter was watched from the stands by her Australian boyfriend, Alex de Minaur, who had caught a 6am flight across from Acapulco after winning the ATP title there on Saturday.
The combination started a debate about the last time a tennis power couple had won their respective titles on the two main tours the same weekend. Chris Evert and Jimmy Connors famously won the two Wimbledon singles titles in 1974, when they were about to get engaged, while more recently Lleyton Hewitt and Kim Clijsters both came good in Indian Wells in 2003. Interestingly, the prize money each won highlighted the gender pay gap in tennis: De Minaur scooped $412,000, Boulter $142,000.
Boulter’s final against Marta Kostyuk started late on Sunday night, UK time, and seemed to be going against her when Kostyuk fired off a barrage of winners to claim the first set. Both women were having trouble with their second serves, committing 10 double faults between them by this stage, but it was Boulter who looked the shakier.
From that moment, though, Boulter found a more reliable pattern from the baseline as she leaned heavily on her thunderous forehand. This shot has always been the key to her game, and she has been crushing it in San Diego all week.
“This week has been very, very special for so many different reasons,” said Boulter in her acceptance speech after a 6-7, 6-2, 6-2 victory. “This one is pretty amazing, I’ve worked very hard for it, I played some incredible tennis all week.
“Today was a complete battle, with myself as well, because I was a little bit nervous. But I managed to get over the line, and that I’m very proud of.
“A lot of it was about me staying as tough as I possibly could mentally, and I managed to keep my cool and actually kind of went within myself and calmed myself down a lot. I think that really helped me, and then I started to relax and play through shots a little bit more.”
It probably helped that Boulter had already won that title in Nottingham, even though the two events were poles apart in quality.
There, she was ranked above every one of her five opponents, with fellow Brit Jodie Burrage the pick of the bunch at No 131. In San Diego, by contrast, she started as the underdog on paper in each match, but came through against Lesia Tsurenko (36), Beatriz Haddad Maia (13), Donna Vekic (28), Emma Navarro (26) and Kostyuk (34).
Boulter also thanked De Minaur in her victory speech, adding: “He finished last night at midnight and I really want to embarrass him. He got on a 4.15 taxi this morning and six o’clock flight to be here today, so I do appreciate it.”
