Katie Boulter has had 18 months to get used to being the British No 1. It has mostly been a time of great milestones and opportunities; from winning her first slew of titles, making her top-30 debut and gracing the cover of fashion magazines to feeling the love from her supporters in far-flung tournaments around the world.
The trade-off with becoming a well-known athlete has occasionally been startling though, including run-ins with a handful of depraved so-called fans. “People have followed me at times,” Boulter says. “I actually went to go and pick up Alex [de Minaur, her boyfriend and fellow tennis player] from Queens, and I had someone follow me in the car. We went to Sloane Square, got out, went for a walk around the shops and stuff and the same car was following me home. I was with Alex, so it was absolutely fine, but yeah, it wasn’t the best feeling.”
Boulter emphasises that she is not unique, and says it is something most women and girls worry about at various points in their lives, whether an athlete or not. “It’s something that I’ve always thought about. Us as women, if we’re home alone at night, sometimes we do think about those things.”
She talks about being followed quite matter-of-factly, maybe because there have been numerous instances of tennis players being harassed or stalked. Most recently, a man who stalked Boulter’s British teammate, Emma Raducanu, was given a restraining order in 2022 for showing up at her home multiple times. Boulter nods when I mention the American Danielle Collins, another WTA player, who this year shared her own experience of stalking. “It happens to all of us, it’s part of life when you’re in the public eye a little bit,” Boulter says. “Obviously you don’t feel comfortable … ”
Has she had any particularly scary situations? “One time in Nottingham [at the tournament she won in 2023 and 2024], I had someone messaging me on social media saying: ‘I’m outside. I’m going to hurt you if you come outside.’ Obviously I alerted the WTA, and they found the guy, who was actually on site. Things like this happen all the time. Obviously we are very well protected, which makes you feel safe. The WTA does a great job of being there for you with that. I do feel like we are protected as much as possible, which at least puts your mind at ease a little bit.”
It seems like a lot to handle while also managing the pressure of trying to win a tournament, but Boulter gives a sad shrug. “It’s kind of normal nowadays. It’s a weird world sometimes.”
Perhaps it is no wonder Boulter says she prefers to go “under the radar”. But that has been harder and harder. This year was without a doubt her best season to date. She won two titles, including the biggest of her career at the San Diego Open, a WTA 500 event played in March. In all five matches that week she beat players ranked above her, including Donna Vekic and Emma Navarro, who both went on to make grand slam semi-finals later in the year. Then she defended her title in Nottingham, memorably beating Raducanu in a three-hour, rain-interrupted semi-final, and also became an Olympian in Paris, reaching the doubles quarter-finals with Heather Watson.
We meet in the vast lobby of a beachside hotel resort in Torremolinos, near Málaga, during the week she capped off the season by leading Great Britain to the Billie Jean King Cup semi-finals. Boulter’s hair is scraped back into her trademark high ponytail and she is grasping a takeaway coffee cup in her hands after a late-night finish in their match the previous day.
Her recent results prompted the great King to single out her potential. “Katie Boulter, people should pay attention to her,” she said in a BBC interview. “I’ve been watching her for about five years now and every year she has got a little bit better – I don’t think people appreciate her enough. She’s got quicker, she’s got more consistent.”
Boulter, 28, was taken aback when she was told. “It was a really nice moment, very sweet,” she says. “It does give you confidence, make you realise people are noticing. Coming from someone like her, she’s been in this game a very long time. She knows what she’s doing, she is the sport, she’s a legend and we all look up to her. We know what she’s done for us. When she says things like that, you listen.”
Beyond the likes of King and her close circle, Boulter says she is not in the habit of paying too much notice to outside opinions. She avoids spending too much time on her phone, citing pressures to look a certain way and the judgment that players encounter on social media. Her downtime is spent with family and her close relationship with her grandfather inspired her to work with the charity Age UK during the Covid pandemic. She recently squeezed a walking tennis session in with elderly players and left feeling re-energised: “I always try and give back to that generation. Sometimes we forget about the elderly. You don’t always get a chance to sit down and actually have a conversation. It’s never enough, but I try and do more and more.”
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Boulter strikes you as a woman, and an athlete, who knows herself better now. On the court, the thing that truly clicked was finally being able to rely on her body. That is in large part down to introducing Andy Murray’s former trainer Matt Little into her team last year, plus the ongoing support of her coach Biljana Veselinovic and personal physiotherapist Rory Mee. The focus in 2024 was on being more intentional with her programme, including on-court physical work alongside the gym. Her body has held up like never before, evidenced in her decision to wedge in a seven-week stint across Asia during the autumn, where she reached her third final of the year in Hong Kong. Ending a 51-match season with no major body concerns is something Boulter has never experienced, after injury setbacks and chronic fatigue throughout her early 20s and her teens. “Touch wood,” she says superstitiously, when referring to her improvements.
She describes the off-season as “a joke”, as she will barely get a week to relax before pre-season training begins, but is trying to take some time to reflect on 2024. “A lot of people go their whole careers without winning a title, and I sometimes don’t realise how hard it is or appreciate it. At the time, you can’t even soak it up. After the San Diego final myself, [her opponent] Marta Kostyuk, and Alex, we all drove in a car to Indian Wells to get ready to play a day later. But those weeks push you on, they give you the confidence that you can get things done. So I think it’s really nice, especially with my team, to remind ourselves of the great work we’ve done.”
That said, she is intent on moving up a gear in 2025. “My aim is to get my ranking up. I’m not looking at a small spectrum. I need to beat the best tennis players in the world, which are going to be top 10. I have to start aiming extremely high, if that’s what I want. Big things.” She does not want to put a number on her aims, but “prioritising bigger events” is one of her main goals. She is yet to go beyond the third round at a grand slam, and one senses that breakthrough is what Boulter craves.
The stacked calendar is such that the 2025 season actually begins this month in Australia. Boulter will fly out early to spend Christmas at De Minaur’s Sydney home for the first time, before potentially coming up against his Australia team in the United Cup. The Australian Open will be the first test of her individual aims in the new year. “I will be striving for a lot higher, we as a team have got to be ambitious. I think that’s what urges me on. I want to go all in, put all my chips in.”
Source: theguardian.com
