Boulter falls at the first hurdle
Katie Boulter makes a backhand return to Daria Kasatkina during their first round match at the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne, Australia on Monday
WYMESWOLD tennis ace Katie Boulter crashed out of the Australian Open in the first round on Monday at the hands of Russia’s Daria Kastakina.
The 24-year-old lost her opening service game of the match and that turned out to be a sign of things to come.
Boulter did level the match at 1-1 with an immediate break back in Kastkina’s first service game but that proved to be the highlight of the first set as she was broken three more times as Kasatkina took the first set 6-1 in just 23 minutes.
At the start of the second set, Kasatkina held serve to take an early lead and on Boulter’s opening service game of the set had a break point to take an early advantage but Boulter held to level the set at 1-1.
A routine service hold made it 2-1 to Kasatkina and then Boulter’s service was broken for the fifth time in the match to give her rival a 3-1 lead which soon became 4-1 as she held her own service without losing a point.
Boulter held her next serve to make it 4-2 but quickly lost the next game as Kasatkina made it 5-2 and moved to the brink of victory.
Needing to hold her serve to stay in the tournament, Boulter slipped to 0-40 and faced three match points but she dug deep and showed great determination to get back to deuce and then save a fourth match point to hold her serve and make it 5-3.
It looked like that was going to be the turning point in the match as Boulter then broke Kasatkina’s serve to love and make it 5-4 with a chance to level the match at 5-5 if she held her serve.
But Boulter gave up another match point and when a Boulter return was called out at 30-40 Kasatkina secured a 6-1 6-4 victory and Boulter was left to rue a number of unforced errors.
After the match Boulter said: : “I’m pretty disappointed with today. I felt like I never really got going, I felt quite uncomfortable out on the court. I put a lot of pressure on myself when really there was absolutely no need to.
“The conditions were slightly different today, it felt heavier, the ball was bouncing higher. She has a different kind of swing to a lot of girls and I really struggled to just get some rhythm and get into the match and compete. I’m pretty upset about it.
“I kind of feel like I showed last week - unfortunately not this week - the game is there to beat some of these top players and I just feel like I have to maintain it longer, I have to get stronger, I have to get better and it will come out when it feels like coming out. It always does.
“The more positive weeks that I get, then the more I feel like I’ll get toward my goal. I believe that I’ll get there eventually and I will keep working hard.”