Katie Boulter joked that she and new doubles pair Emma Raducanu are going all the way at Wimbledon after they got their partnership off to a pitch-perfect start at Queen’s on Monday afternoon, cruising past Wu Fang-hsien and Jiang Xinyu in straight sets, 6-4, 6-4.
The all-British team featuring the country’s two biggest names in tennis was destined to the most eye-catching match on the first day of the inaugural WTA 500 event in west London.
Raducanu revealed that their teaming-up has been long in the making, with casual discussions about entering the draw in Madrid, Miami, and ahead of the French Open, before a conversation on the clay courts at the club that plays host to this tournament finally cemented their plans.
No doubt to the delight of the organisers. But instead of scheduling the box-office draw on The Queen’s Club freshly named Andy Murray Arena, ‘Boultercanu’ were relegated to Court One, which can only hold 1,000 souls to the centre court’s near-8,000.
Inside the ground, queues snaked around the lower-tier court an hour-long, and those hoping to view the match on television were disapppointed further when the BBC announced that they would be featuring one of the other British hopefuls, Sonay Kartal, do battle with Daria Kasatkina. Mail Sport understands that the organisers hands were tied due to WTA world feed commitments agreed long before the announcement of the partnership, but drab regulatory demands are unlikely to placate a viewing public denied heroines.
But for those inside Court One, the air fizzed with promise, with the crowd clamouring for a glimpse of ‘Radders’ and her British No1 partner.
Emma Raducanu and Katie Boulter get their new pairing off on the right foot at Queen’s
The duo may have been relegated to Court One but their box-office quality meant the stands were stuffed with a jubilant home crowd
Boulter and Raducanu were quick off the mark with a straight-sets victory in their Queen’s curtain-raiser
For Raducanu, the smaller court afforded her a comforting cloak of anonymity as she fine-tunes her doubles game. The Briton had never won a match in the format until today, playing her first and last tour match in 2022.
‘I think sometimes on the smaller courts, you get a bigger feel for the match and the atmosphere and the environment, because it’s a lot closer, more intimate, and you get the support more,’ she said after the match. ‘For me, I love playing on those smaller outside courts where you really feel the support and the crowd gets into it. I was filling my bottle up, and I was literally having a chat in the stands, because it’s that’s how close it is. I think it adds a really nice feel to it.’
As for the tennis itself? The spontaneous nature of the pairing meant there was a certain lack of polish to the early stages of the match.
Raducanu and Boulter were the first to claim the early break, riding momentum from the stands, and the 28-year-old was the more solid presence in the opening set as her stronger experience in the format told.
But more telling were the players’ moods, as Raducanu and Boulter exchanged high-fives and laughed through baseline miscommunication to build a 4-2 lead.
But Wu and Jiang struck back in the eighth game of the tie, forcing the match back onto serve. Eager not to waste time, the Britons struck quickly for the immediate break-back, with Raducanu in particular showing how sumptuous her clean groundstrokes can look on grass.
With the first set in the bag, Raducanu and Boulter, clad in complementary Nike kits and looking the platonic ideal of a doubles partnership, really got into the swing of things.
Raducanu, under the watchful eyes of both Mark Petchey and Nick Cavaday, grew in confidence at the net, letting out a roar of delight as she popped stinging winners between an increasingly frustrated Wu and Jiang, mired in mid-court, and Boulter’s doubles competence across the baseline saw the Brits stop their opponents in their tracks and sprint away with the win.
Raducanu admitted that she had been nervous before the match due to her inexperience
But Boulter’s steady confidence in the discipline helped the British stars seal the debut win
Boulter joked that their future pairing would now look to a Wimbledon title as the next step
Neither Raducanu or Boulter knows what the future holds for the partnership, but both seemed exhilarated in the after-glow of the win.
‘I was actually very nervous before the match,’ Raducanu admitted. ‘I don’t know if Katie could tell. But probably more nervous than the singles, because I just didn’t really necessarily know what to do, but I’m really happy once we got out there. Katie made me feel so comfortable, and I’m just so pleased to get a win on the board.’
But while the younger player was keen to play down expectations and leave their partnership open-ended, Boulter remained a-buzz with victory.
‘Scrap what she said,’ Boulter said in the wake of Raducanu’s careful obfuscation. ‘We’re going for the Wimbledon title.’
Both Boutler and Raducanu have hinted at the importance of getting time on grass under their belts ahead of Wimbledon at the end of month, with the latter in particular testing her limits as she recovers from suffering another back spasm amid her grass-court preparations.
With their new doubles pairing taking off nicely, they will look to do so in good humour too.
