Kayla Cross<\/a>\u00a0will try to follow the biggest win of her professional career \u2013 an upset of No. 69 and former top 25 player Katie Boulter on Monday \u2013 in the second round of the National Bank Open on Wednesday against No. 31-ranked Ann Li (Tennis Channel, WTA TV) in Toronto, Canada.<\/p>\nThe victory was Cross\u2019 first in a World Tennis Associaton Masters 1000 tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m definitely shocked,\u201d Cross said. \u201cI think I said, \u2018Oh my gosh,\u2019 a few times while I was walking up to the net. It still doesn\u2019t really feel real, so I\u2019m just trying to soak it all in. I got a text message asking if I wanted to be on Center Court (today), and I obviously said yes right away. The game plan going in was to try and play my game, go for the shots, live in the moment and be happy out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cross, a native of London, Canada, who was a sophomore on LSU\u2019s 2025-26 team, opened the match with steady play, as the two traded service games for much of the opening set. Cross forged ahead with the first break of the match, taking a 5-3 advantage before Boulter fired right back to get back o in n serve at 5-5. Little separated the two as they entered the first-set tiebreaker upon reaching 6-6. Cross built an early lead at 4-1 and refused to let it slip, maintaining her cushion as she closed the set 7-6 (3).<\/p>\n
Boulter kept herself in the match, holding the lead over Cross through the middle stages of the second set. The Tiger faced break points at 2-2, and again at 4-4, but held strong to remain on serve. In the final stretch, Cross leveled up at 5-5 to steal the decisive break of the match, securing the final two games and completing the straight-sets win with a second-set score of 7-5.<\/p>\n
The win came just two weeks after she captured the previous biggest title of her professional career and a career-high world ranking of No. 168 at the WTT W75 Granby in Quebec, Canada.<\/p>\n
For more information on the LSU women\u2019s tennis, follow the Tigers on X @lsuwten, Instagram @LSUWTen, and Facebook.com\/lsuwten.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LSU tennis player Kayla Cross beat No. 69-ranked Katie Boulter to advance in the National Bank Open. (LSU…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":844465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,416428,1222,324949,85,747],"class_list":["post-844464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-kayla-cross","tag-lsu-tigers","tag-lsu-womens-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=844464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/844465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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