Katie Boulter said it was “lesson learned” as she overcame an incident that “got under my skin” to reach the last 16 of the Hong Kong Open.<\/p>\n
The British number one was broken by Viktorija Golubic when serving for the match at 5-2 up in the second set.<\/p>\n
During the game, Boulter complained to the umpire after a point was not replayed for an audible noise from outside causing a distraction.<\/p>\n
An unsettled Boulter also lost her next service game before the world number 49 came through a tie-break to take a 6-2 7-6 (7-2) victory.<\/p>\n
“It was interesting,” said Boulter, who was the losing finalist at the Hong Kong Open in 2024.<\/p>\n
“I was playing some really good tennis. I feel like I should have closed it out but a couple of things happened.<\/p>\n
“There was a little bit of interesting judgement which got under my skin a little bit and, usually, I’m pretty good at batting it off but I was a little tired.<\/p>\n
“It’s end of season and it seemed to get to me but lesson learned, I managed to get over the line.”<\/p>\n
Boulter, who beat world number 89 Golubic in dominant fashion when reaching the semi-finals at the Japan Open last month, will play American Claire Liu in the next round.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Venus Williams suffered a 17th consecutive singles defeat as she was beaten by fellow American Mary Stoiana in the first round in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n
The 46-year-old, who is 597th in the women’s rankings, lost 6-2 6-3 to 23-year-old Stoiana, who is ranked 113th.<\/p>\n
Williams – a seven-time Grand Slam singles champion – has not won a singles match since July 2025 and relies on wildcards to play WTA tournaments.<\/p>\n
Norrie through in Paris<\/p>\n
Cameron Norrie progressed to the second round of the Paris Masters with victory over Italy’s Matteo Arnaldi.<\/p>\n
The British number two notched a 6-4 1-6 6-3 against Arnaldi, who is ranked nine places above him in 36th, in one hour and 41 minutes to secure his first ATP Tour win since August.<\/p>\n
“I’m just trying to enjoy my tennis. It’s been a difficult year for me and I don’t really care any more – I just want to play, and play to win,” Norrie told Sky Sports.<\/p>\n
“I put a lot of expectation on myself to go and win, especially being a favourite [at times]. I was getting stuck a lot and I definitely want to try to change that.<\/p>\n
“I really just want to play every point, enjoy every point, use my skills and give myself permission to let go and play to win. Be a bit more grateful to play.”<\/p>\n
Norrie, 31, was already a break up against Arnaldi when he lost his serve in the fourth game of the opening set.<\/p>\n
However, the Briton immediately broke back before he served out to win it 6-4 in 36 minutes.<\/p>\n
Arnaldi broke Norrie three times in the second set to level the match, but the Briton regrouped in the decider and, after securing a break to go 3-1 up, was able to hold his nerve to close out the match.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Katie Boulter said it was “lesson learned” as she overcame an incident that “got under my skin” to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":903938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-903937","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\/903937","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=903937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/903938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=903937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=903937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=903937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}