The 29-year-old endured a difficult 2025, dropping from 24th in the world to outside the top 100, and she lost her British number one ranking amid injury issues.<\/p>\n
Searching for a fresh start, she split from her long-time coach Biljana Veselinovic and appointed Michael Joyce – the former coach of Maria Sharapova – in early 2026.<\/p>\n
After a first-round exit in January’s Australian Open, Boulter returned to the world’s top 100 with a WTA 250 title in Ostrava and a run to the third round in Miami.<\/p>\n
But her form remained inconsistent and she had won just three WTA Tour-level singles matches from four clay tournaments in the build-up to the Paris major.<\/p>\n
Unforced errors flew freely from both players’ racquets and the pair twice traded breaks in the opening set before Boulter served it out at the second time of asking.<\/p>\n
Back-to-back double faults from Boulter put Urhobo on the front foot early in the second, and although Boulter levelled the scores mid-set, the Florida-born player restored her advantage immediately and forced the decider.<\/p>\n
Both players raised their level in the third and the quality improved somewhat as Boulter stamped her authority on the contest with a break in the fourth game.<\/p>\n
Once again, the Briton failed to serve out the set and she eventually grabbed the win – after two hours and 10 minutes – by breaking Urhobo’s serve for a sixth time.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, 58 unforced errors to Boulter’s 35 proved too costly for rising star Urhobo, who broke into the top 200 for the first time earlier this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 29-year-old endured a difficult 2025, dropping from 24th in the world to outside the top 100, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664733,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-664732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}