A terrible start for British players at Wimbledon continued as Katie Boulter was thrashed by 18-year-old world No 172 Tyra Caterina Grant – who was playing her first ever Grand Slam match.
The Sunday-night withdrawal of Emma Raducanu left Boulter as the highest-ranked British player in the women’s draw but she lost 6-4, 6-2 in just over an hour.
The 29-year-old served eight double faults and landed just 58 per cent of her first serves with a dreadfully disappointing performance.
Boulter had an excellent start to the grass court season with the best win of her career against Elena Rybakina in the HSBC Championships at Queen’s Club en route to the semi-finals.
But all that momentum was sapped as she was comprehensively outplayed by Italian qualifier Grant.
The first day of Wimbledon turned into a blue Monday for the home guard. Eleven hopefuls started the day and one by one that hope was snuffed out. Boulter’s exit added to the misery on Tuesday.
Katie Boulter became the latest British player to be knocked out at Wimbledon – suffering defeat by Caterina Grant (left)
Boulter went down in straight sets, 6-4, 6-2, against her Italian opponent
Grant, making her grand slam debut, trained with Jannik Sinner as a child and is a potential star in the making.
An increasingly frustrated Boulter could not read her serves, failing to create a single break point.
At one point she even felt the Hawkeye system was against her, pointedly checking a ball for a white mark after one of six aces flew past her.
Having dropped serve early in the opening set, back-to-back double-faults coughed up a first break in the second and Grant reeled off the final four games for a maiden grand slam win.
On Monday, amid the slaughter came the grimmest news of all: Jack Draper followed Raducanu in withdrawing from the tournament, as his chronic bone bruising injury reared its head again.
Harriet Dart, Cam Norrie, Alicia Dudeney, Oliver Tarvet, 18-year-old Mimi Xu and 17-year-old Hannah Klugman and Fran Jones were all among the casualties.
Finally, on Tuesday morning, at long last, there was a British winner at Wimbledon.
After 11 losses for our other representatives in a calamitous clean sweep at SW19, Katie Swan stepped forward and stepped up on Court 16, beating Irina-Camelia Begu.
Swan collapsed in a heap at the baseline when Begu sent her final shot long, confirming her 6-4, 6-4 victory in one hour and 22 minutes over the Romanian.
Only once before had Swan won a match at Wimbledon – in 2018, and it happened to be against Begu – but this win meant more to the 27-year-old wildcard this time.
She had spoken in the build-up about dealing with injuries and setbacks which came close to costing this Brit her career. Swan contemplated never coming back, having accepted a coaching job in the United States in December 2024. That gig lasted only a couple of months before she consulted medical help to get her back on track physically.
It was once she realised she could return to playing that she quit coaching, and now, she has officially ended the awful streak of the Brits at Wimbledon in 2026. This is her first time competing at SW19 since 2023.
Swan made hard work of becoming the first Brit to reach the second round at SW19, however. She was leading 6-4, 5-4 and serving at 40-0 when Begu brought it back to deuce. Digging deep, Swan triumphed, though did not quite qualify as lucky No 13, with 11 Brits having been beaten elsewhere and a 12th in Jack Pinnington trailing 6-3, 7-6, 4-3 to Brandon Nakashima but not yet officially out of the tournament.
Swan was only 15 years old when she reached the final of the girls’ singles at the Australian Open in 2015, though amid her back injury issues, she struggled to live up to her potential. Yet she will be flying the flag for Britain in the second round, against either 26th seed Madison Keys or another American in qualifier Kayla Day.
