Another Brit bites the dust… Katie Boulter loses Wimbledon first-round match against world No 172 in another crushing blow to home hopes
A terrible start for British players at Wimbledon continued as Katie Boulter was thrashed by 18-year-old world No 172 Tyra Caterina Grant – who was playing her first ever Grand Slam match.
The Sunday-night withdrawal of Emma Raducanu left Boulter as the highest-ranked British player in the women’s draw but she lost 6-4, 6-2 in just over an hour.
The 29-year-old served eight double faults and landed just 58 per cent of her first serves with a dreadfully disappointing performance.
Boulter had an excellent start to the grass court season with the best win of her career against Elena Rybakina in the HSBC Championships at Queen’s Club en route to the semi-finals.
But all that momentum was sapped as she was comprehensively outplayed by Italian qualifier Grant.
The first day of Wimbledon turned into a blue Monday for the home guard. Eleven hopefuls started the day and one by one that hope was snuffed out. Boulter’s exit added to the misery on Tuesday.
Katie Boulter became the latest British player to be knocked out at Wimbledon – suffering defeat by Caterina Grant (left)
Boulter went down in straight sets, 6-4, 6-2, against her Italian opponent
Grant, making her grand slam debut, trained with Jannik Sinner as a child and is a potential star in the making.
An increasingly frustrated Boulter could not read her serves, failing to create a single break point.
At one point she even felt the Hawkeye system was against her, pointedly checking a ball for a white mark after one of six aces flew past her.
Having dropped serve early in the opening set, back-to-back double-faults coughed up a first break in the second and Grant reeled off the final four games for a maiden grand slam win.
On Monday, amid the slaughter came the grimmest news of all: Jack Draper followed Raducanu in withdrawing from the tournament, as his chronic bone bruising injury reared its head again.
Harriet Dart, Cam Norrie, Alicia Dudeney, Oliver Tarvet, 18-year-old Mimi Xu and 17-year-old Hannah Klugman and Fran Jones were all among the casualties.
