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. “She was better than me today for sure,” she said. “I think I’m probably struggling to be kind to myself, but I’m going to be right now. 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 actually expected it to kind of die down a little bit, but it didn’t. I think from the first point of the match I was expecting the crowd to go silent, which is normally how it works. But it never changed. So I think in my mind I was like, ‘Okay, so you need to adjust here. You need to be ready. You need to work it out as we go along.’ And I think that was my plan.
“I always want to have an atmosphere. I always want to have noise. I love that. I normally relish that feeling. So for me today it’s a very different feeling to feel slightly distracted from that. It was a little abnormal for me.”
As Boulter tried to start the process of digesting such a tough defeat, the British qualifier Francesca Jones took a significant step forward as she defeated the former top 20 player Magda Linette 6-4, 1-6, 6-3 to reach the second round of the US Open for the first time.
It took a considerable amount of concentration and resilience for Jones to find a way through one of the most turbulent matches. She had played brilliantly on Tuesday to take the first set before rain forced the suspension of play for the rest of the night.
After again being forced off court due to rain right after their warmup on Wednesday, Jones had to claw her way back into the match after a brilliant start to the second set from Linette: “It was incredible how she was playing until about 4-0 and then started to equal out. But, you know, in that situation, hats off if they can maintain that. I just tried to show my northern grit, stick in there and do what I can,” she said.
This has been a gruelling year for Jones, who after breaking into the top 100 last year spent much of this season sidelined with various injuries and a freak concussion. She finally managed to find her form and enjoy a consistent run of training from July, winning consecutive titles at WTA 125 events on clay, meaning she arrived at the final grand slam of the year in good shape. After working through three rounds of qualifying, the reward for Jones’s toil is one of the most important wins so far.
Elsewhere, Britain’s Jan Choinski fell 6-3, 6-1, 7-6(5) to Botic van de Zandschulp, and Jacob Fearnley, a lucky loser, was defeated 6-3, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 by the 27th seed, Tomas Etcheverry. The big shock of the day came on Court 17 as the 19-year-old Jodar, one of the most talked about players in the buildup to the tournament, was demolished 6-2, 6-1, 6-1 by Bu.
