Katie Boulter Suffers Defeat at the US Open and Drops in the Ranking
Tennis player Katie Boulter will experience a drop in the world ranking, placing her outside the top 50 positions, after her defeat against Marta Kostyuk in the first round of the US Open.
Boulter, who was the number one in Great Britain, has had a challenging season and admitted to feeling exhausted after competing immediately after Wimbledon in the United States.
The draw gave her a difficult match against the number 27 seed, and Boulter couldn’t avoid her first-round defeat in this tournament in four years, losing with a score of 6-4, 6-4.
Boulter’s only previous encounter against the Ukrainian Kostyuk took place in San Diego last spring, where she won the most important title of her career.However, he was unable to defend his title due to injury, and since then, victories have been scarce, aside from an impressive first clay-court title, albeit below the main circuit level, just before the French Open.
It was a close match, but Kostyuk made better use of her opportunities, with Boulter converting only two of her 10 break points.
Three of them occurred in the last game, after Boulter, who committed eight double faults, managed to save five match points on her own serve, but could not force a deciding set.
This is a rare first-round defeat at a Grand Slam for the 29-year-old tennis player, who had reached the second round in nine of her ten previous appearances in the main draws of major tournaments.
