{"id":505125,"date":"2026-02-28T11:18:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T11:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/505125\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T11:18:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T11:18:07","slug":"merida-open-katie-boulter-loses-to-jasmine-paolini-in-last-eight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/505125\/","title":{"rendered":"Merida Open: Katie Boulter loses to Jasmine Paolini in last eight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Britain’s Katie Boulter was unable to build on a superb start as she lost to Italian top seed Jasmine Paolini in the last eight of the Merida Open.<\/p>\n

Against the world number seven in Mexico, Boulter won the first set in 28 minutes without dropping a game.<\/p>\n

But errors started to creep in as Paolini went on to win 0-6 6-3 6-3.<\/p>\n

Having won only three points on her serve in the opening set, Paolini started the second set strongly, holding for the first time and then breaking to go 3-1 up.<\/p>\n

Boulter, who came into the contest on the back of a seven-match winning run, including claiming the Ostrava Open title<\/a>, broke straight back to love but neither player could hold serve in the next three games.<\/p>\n

It was Paolini who held her nerve to take the second set and level the contest.<\/p>\n

The 2024 Wimbledon and French Open finalist raced into a 2-0 lead in the decider and, although Boulter broke back and held serve to lead 3-2, the Italian’s confidence grew as she won four games in a row to claim a semi-final spot.<\/p>\n

“It was a really tough one – Katie, the first set she was smashing every ball and hitting a winner everywhere,” Paolini told Sky Sports.<\/p>\n

“I was telling myself to play more deep in the court and hit the ball harder because I had to raise the level to try and win the match and in the end it worked out.<\/p>\n

“I was trying to be calm, to think what I had to do. I think when you’re nervous you can’t find the solutions.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain’s Katie Boulter was unable to build on a superb start as she lost to Italian top seed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":505126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-505125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}