Great Britain may be missing Emma Raducanu in The Hague this week, but they still made a compelling start to their qualifying campaign as they romped to victory over Germany.
The two singles matches must both have been satisfying for team captain Anne Keothavong – albeit in very different ways – as Great Britain moved on to their decisive meeting with the Netherlands on Saturday in good heart.
First, Raducanu’s replacement Sonay Kartal scored a straight-sets victory over former Wimbledon quarter-finalist Jule Niemeier on what was Kartal’s Billie Jean King Cup debut.
And then British No 1 Katie Boulter managed to crack one of tennis’s most awkward puzzles: how do you beat slice-and-dice specialist Tatjana Maria on a bumpy indoor clay court?
It is difficult to watch Maria’s carving game-style – with its slow, heavily underspin balls – without feeling anxious. Even for a top professional, timing often proves elusive against what the players call “junk” – a style designed to cause maximum disruption.
Boulter spent the first set in a miserable funk. Any attempt at aggression seemed to end in the ball flying yards out of court. Yet there was no sense in poking and prodding, as that would only wrap her even more tightly in Maria’s web. Here was a classic catch-22.
A set and a break down at 6-1, 3-2, Boulter was in all sorts of trouble. Her face grew rigid with tension as she spoke to Keothavong at the change of ends. Happily, the two of them came up with the right answer. Boulter needed to keep playing her own big-hitting game, and hope that the ball started landing where it was supposed to.
Drawing on her strong BJK Cup record, Boulter managed to loosen up some of the tension in her wrists and arms. Eventually – starting with the first break-back for 3-3 in the second set – the timing started to come.
Katie Boulter covering all the 📐 of the court!#BJKCuppic.twitter.com/OrjNRVqnem
— Billie Jean King Cup (@BJKCup) April 11, 2025
There was a certain symmetry to Boulter’s eventual 1-6, 6-3, 6-1 victory. The scoreline shows how completely she turned the tables in the end, winning 10 of the last 11 games after having lost nine of the first 12.
Playing with growing freedom, Boulter wound up bullying Maria with almost every shot. Those skidding slices no longer looked like dangerous doodlebugs, but instead became slow, sit-up-and-hit-me balls. The transformation was extraordinary.
“It was a really tough match,” said Boulter afterwards. “That was my first match on clay [this season]. To come out against someone who’s such a good tennis player, very quirky, makes you play so many shots – it’s never easy to play against her. I’m really proud of myself today.”
Asked how she had escaped from her first-set paralysis, Boulter replied “I just kept believing. At the start I was just trying to get used to her ball bounce and I was struggling a little bit with it. It wasn’t really coming through the court at all, it was just sitting. But the moment I kind of found that, I felt very comfortable and I was in control ...
