Akasha Urhobo’s first Grand Slam main-draw match will come against Katie Boulter of Great Britain, a sharp reward for a 19-year-old who was ranked world No. 432 at the end of last year and has since climbed nearly 250 spots.
Urhobo won the USTA’s wild card challenge for the French Open after a spring run that made her one of the most improved American players on clay. She was 29-7 this year entering Paris, and for five weeks between the end of March and the start of May she won more clay-court ranking points than any other U.S. player outside the top 100.
That surge has been building for years. In 2022, when Urhobo came to a small ITF tournament in Florence, South Carolina, from her home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Jermaine Jenkins first saw her as a 15-year-old with an aggressive style that stuck in his mind. He recalled watching from a distance and thinking she was coming in on everything, not building points in the usual way, but still creating real chances to finish at the net.
Jenkins and Urhobo started working together last June, and her results have moved with that partnership. She qualified for the main draw at the WTA 500 Charleston Open in March, led Solana Sierra 7-5, 3-0 before Sierra retired because of injury, and then lost in the next round. Even so, the event fit a pattern: Urhobo has kept finding ways to hold her own against players operating at a higher level.
Urhobo said the players she has faced feel close to her own game. “They’re just like me,” she said, adding that they are “just playing at this higher level, and if I keep my head down and keep grinding, I can be there too.” That belief has become the story of her season, and it is why her first shot in a major now comes with real expectations behind it.
What makes her rise stand out is not just the ranking jump. It is how she has done it. While many American players of her generation built their games more traditionally, Urhobo has leaned into a willingness to come forward and take chances at the net, a style Jenkins noticed early and one that has translated well on clay. The French Open draw will tell whether that approach can keep working when the pressure gets heavier and the stage gets larger.
