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Katie Boulter came back from a set and a break down to beat Tatjana Maria - Getty Images for LTA/Nathan Stirk
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.
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 of the shots a lot.”
Earlier, Kartal had deployed her trademark grittiness against Niemeier in a match that underlined the value of consistency. At 5ft 4in, she looked underpowered in the early stages as her much taller and stronger opponent claimed the first two games. But Kartal makes a virtue of her ruggedness, tracking balls down relentlessly and asking you to beat her point after point.
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Sonay Kartal stretches for a forehand en route to victory over Jule Niemeier - Getty Images for LTA/Nathan Stirk
This proved too much for Niemeier, whose confidence had already been shaken by a 6-3, 6-1 upset against world No 265 Eva Vedder of the Netherlands during Germany’s 3-0 defeat on Thursday.
The key game came at the end of the first set, as Niemeier served at 4-5. She wasted a couple of opportunities to level up for 5-5, and seemed particularly offended to have missed a forehand by a centimetre on one of those points, even though small margins are the nature of the sport. Then, after netting one of many errant forehands to lose the net, she sat weeping on her chair with her towel over her head. She never regained her composure, opening the second set with consecutive double-faults and eventually going down to a 6-4, 6-2 defeat.
“I’m super proud of my debut match,” said Kartal, 23, in her on-court interview. “Obviously [it was] nerve-wracking coming out here first on. I’m proud of my performance and the crowd definitely stuck with me.
“It’s completely different [to playing on the tour],” Kartal added. “I love having a coach next to me and the rest of the guys beside me on the bench. It’s a different style of tennis but I absolutely love this environment.”
Dream debut
Sonay Kartal defeats Jule Niemeier 6-4, 6-2 to give Great Britain a tie lead over Germany pic.twitter.com/GbRPKeFgZv
— Billie Jean King Cup (@BJKCup) April 11, 2025
Kartal’s selection followed the withdrawal of Raducanu, who has opted to schedule what her management called a “mini-training block” ahead of the clay-court season rather than play these ties in The Hague.
Kartal certainly justified Keothavong’s faith and is now likely to play Vedder in the opening rubber of Saturday’s winner-takes-all tie against the Netherlands.
With Germany having lost both their ties in this three-team round robin, Saturday’s match becomes a straightforward eliminator to decide who goes forward to the BJK Cup finals in Shenzhen, China, from September 16 to 21.
Against the Netherlands, one suspects that Great Britain’s best chance is to get the job done in the two singles matches rather than to rely on the potentially tie-clinching doubles rubber.
Seeded seventh in this competition, Keothavong’s team have the highest-ranked individuals, but their results in doubles have been indifferent for some time. On Friday night, the German pairing of Anna-Lena Friedsam and Laura Siegemund claimed a consolation point with a 6-4, 6-1 win over Harriet Dart and Olivia Nicholls, even though this was irrelevant to the wider picture.
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