What Katie did
Boulter wins first grand slam match
For the second day running, everyone was talking about what Katie did. After Katie Swan’s tumultuous win over the world No36 on Monday, Katie Boulter became the latest promising young Briton to clock up her maiden grand-slam success.
At 21, Boulter has long been seen as one of the future stars of British tennis, equipped with a howitzer of a forehand that belies her slight frame. But in her only previous appearance in the Wimbledon main draw, she had fluffed her lines, allowing Christina Mchale to come through late in the third set.
In last night’s press conference, Boulter insisted that this sour memory had not been a factor in yesterday’s victory over Veronica Cepede Royg of Paraguay. But the experience must have been useful as she came back from a potentially crushing reverse – a wasted match point in the second set.
“It was really difficult, having a match point, not getting it,” said Boulter. “Finding a way is something that is built within me. I feel like I’m a great competitor on the court. I’d like to think so anyway. I think that got me through. I showed guts. I’m pretty happy with it.”
Asked if mastering her own emotions had been the key, Boulter replied: “Winning your first match at Wimbledon is always going to be extremely hard. I just tried to do the best I could. Maybe I could have got that back in the court at match point. But I got the win and found a way to win. I’m really happy.”
The stewards on Court 14 were tested almost as strenuously as the players as fans tried to push their way into the handful of seats surrounding one of the All England Club’s more intimate venues. The crush around the court grew as the contest ebbed and flowed.
As the match progressed, cries of “Come on Katie” mixed with Cepede Royg’s rather distinctive grunt of “Oh-may-huh”.
The botched match point could so easily have been the takeaway from this match, had Boulter not recovered her composure.
It was not much to look at, just a middling return from Cepede Royg and a nervy backhand into the net by Boulter. But it defined the mood of the next 20 minutes as Cepede Royg broke, held and then broke again to bring up a third set.
From the crowd’s perspective, four straight games had gone against the head – and it became five when Cepede Royg held serve to move ahead in the decider. But Boulter now showed that competitive instinct, breaking in the ninth game and concluding the entertainment with a service hold to love.
Her final shot, a deft forehand drop shot, drew a standing ovation from the crowd.
Boulter now faces a difficult match against Naomi Osaka, the 18th seed from Japan, who eliminated Monica Niculescu for the loss of just five games. But she is already guaranteed a payout of £63,000 and a boost of around 11 places in the rankings, taking her to within a dozen places of the world’s top 100. With Heather Watson losing late last night to Kirsten Flipkens, there will be an exchanging of positions on the British ladder, so that Boulter goes to No2 and Watson to No3.
Boulter will also have plenty of time to compare notes with Swan over the coming days, as they are playing together in the ladies’ doubles. “We’re actually close friends,” said Boulter. “It’s really good all British players are playing well.”
The revolution is coming in British tennis. Five new female faces have played at this year’s Wimbledon, all ranked inside the 220-mark and all 21 years old or under.
Asked yesterday about this wider group, Boulter said: “We’ve been pushing each other for months; years now. It’s great to see that everyone’s doing really well. Hopefully I can lead that group and get higher and have a better ranking.”
Despite her relative inexperienced, Boulter has achieved more visibility than her peers thus far, having recently posed in a shoot for Harper’s Bazaar. Already the beneficiary of an endorsement deal from Nike, she also appeared on the front page of a national newspaper in the build-up to last year’s Wimbledon. Her photograph will be everywhere again today, and this time she will have fully earned the exposure.
Many seem to take an active pride in dissociating themselves from “soccer”, declaring it “ghastly” and decrying the scandalous amounts of money paid to players “for kicking a piece of leather around”.
Fun fact: Roger Federer earned $77.2million (about £58.5million) for knocking a ball over a net.
Few football shirts were a rarity on show. The first confirmed sighting was of a Sunderland away strip, which may have been more of a forfeit for a bet gone wrong than a pledge of allegiance. Finally, after 45 minutes of aimless wandering around various concourses, a pair of England shirts were spotted, worn by a German, Carl Rietschel, and an American, Henry Pratt. “As we are studying over here, we figured we would support England,” Rietschel said.
They were, however, going to resist the temptation to make an early exit to stay for Novak Djokovic’s first-round match against Tennys Sandgren on No1 Court. “We are sadly aware the game is not being shown, but this is our first time at Wimbledon so we are going to make the most of it,” Pratt said.
Not everyone was so sanguine. The queue for taxis to the station was already considerable by 5.30pm with a few panicked expressions betraying the mental permutations of whether they would make it home before kick-off.
Yet those closet football fans were in the minority. There was no mass stampede towards the gates around 6pm nor were there any signs of mutiny when the big screen on Henman Hill continued to show Djokovic once the England game kicked off. In short, this was no different to any other evening in SW19. Harry Kane could have scored a hat-trick and it would have caused less of a stir then a ballboy taking a decent catch.
For the patrons of the All England Club this is the true centre of the universe.