Katie Boulter fought past American wildcard Akasha Urhobo 6-4 4-6 6-4 on Monday to reach the second round of the French Open, only the second time she has made it that far at Roland Garros.
The 29-year-old, ranked 114 places higher than Urhobo, had to work for it after the 19-year-old made a lively Grand Slam main-draw debut and forced a deciding set. Boulter will next face Austrian 28th seed mogazmasr.com/tag/anastasia-potapova" rel="tag">Anastasia Potapova, a match previewed in MogazMasr’s Potapova Live coverage of the Paris draw.
The result matters because Boulter arrived in Paris with questions still hanging over her clay-court game. Clay has not always suited her, and she won her first WTA Tour-level match on the surface only last year, but she told Sport earlier this month that she believed she could play great on it. That belief has started to show over the last few weeks.
Boulter had won three WTA Tour-level singles matches from four clay tournaments in the build-up to the Paris major, a useful run after a difficult 2025 in which injury issues pushed her from 24th in the world to outside the top 100 and cost her the British number one ranking. Since then, she has tried to reset. In early 2026 she split from long-time coach Biljana Veselinovic and brought in Michael Joyce.
The changes have already brought some payoff. After January’s Australian Open, Boulter won a WTA 250 title in Ostrava and reached the third round in Miami, results that carried her back into the world’s top 100. She also came into Paris with a reminder that progress on clay is still measured in small steps, not grand statements.
Urhobo, meanwhile, left the court with the experience of a first Grand Slam main draw, and little else given how tight the match became after she levelled it at one set apiece. Boulter will now have to prove that this was more than a stubborn opening-round escape when she meets Potapova on the French Open schedule.
