With the grounds of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Centre at a standstill in the middle of a furious downpour and all eyes on the only two stadium courts under retractable roofs, there was nowhere for Katie Boulter to hide as her grand slam season came to a bitter end with an excruciating 6-1, 6-0 beating by the seventh seed, Karolina Muchova, in the second round of the US Open. Boulter and Muchova had initially been scheduled to compete on Court 17 after the men’s first round match between the rising star Rafael Jodar and Yunchaokete Bu, but as heavy rain suspended play Boulter and Muchova were quickly moved to Louis Armstrong Stadium. She was completely outclassed by a sublime Muchova, who employed her usual brand of silky shotmaking and all-court tennis.
Afterwards Boulter said she had struggled to adjust to her unexpected new environment, and particularly the ambient noise from the distracted, chatty crowd, something the US Open has become notorious for. I struggled with the conditions. I struggled with the roof, I struggled with the noise.
I kind of let these little things distract me a little bit. But ultimately, at the end of the day, it was a bad day at the office.” This has been a life-changing summer for Boulter, who married the men’s player Alex de Minaur in July. However after a promising start to the season in which she won her fourth WTA title, in Ostrava, and returned to the top 60 after her brilliant victory over the world No 2, Elena Rybakina at Queen’s, things have stalled.
Until her first round win in Cincinnati last month, she had lost five consecutive matches, including a painful straight-sets loss in the first round of Wimbledon. Confidence has been hard to come by. This was the first time that Boulter has competed on one of the stadium courts in New York and she had only trained on Louis Armstrong Stadium once.
She said the atmosphere took her by surprise: “I think a lot of the times in matches when you warm up, it’s quite noisy. I think from the first point of the match I was expecting the crowd to go silent, which is normally how it works. So I think in my mind I was like, ‘Okay, so you need to adjust here.
You need to work it out as we go along.’ And I think that was my plan. I always want to have noise. I normally relish that feeling.
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