Katie Boulter admitted the emotions of a tough few weeks finally caught up with her after crashing out to Harmony Tan.
The 25-year-old learned shortly after her first-round victory over Karolina Pliskova that her grandmother, Jill, had passed away. And she acknowledged the toll that had obviously taken on her, as well as a tough build-up to the Championships, after her 6-1, 6-1 defeat.
Boulter said: “Obviously it’s a pretty difficult one to take. I may have seen it coming a little bit — I started to reach my emotional and physical point where I was struggling a little bit in the warmup.
“I’m just a little bit emotionally drained. It has been a long few weeks and this week was the cherry on top.
“I’ve been working so hard for a long period of time, getting through an injury to start with is a huge, huge struggle, and I made it through, and I’m here and played some amazing tennis week in, week out.
“I've played a lot of matches. I sort of went from zero to a hundred quite quickly and, yes, this week has probably been the tipping point.
“Credit to her, she was playing some tough, tough tennis. Clearly it was a bit much. But, yes, this was not an easy one.”
Plenty was made of the fact this game wasn’t put on Centre Court or No.1 Court, and Tan agreed it worked in her favour that it wasn’t.
The French star, who beat Serena Williams in round one, said: “When I saw where it was, of course I thought it was better because when you play a Brit on Centre Court, there are a lot of people for her.
“I like to play on a small court.”
But Boulter added: “The crowd tried their best and I’m not sure whether I was playing on Centre Court or Court No.1 or Court 20 if that’s what was going to get me through.”
