Stadium 17 gave love a second chance to bloom on Tuesday.
Less than a year ago, off-court couple Katie Boulter and Alex de Minaur were both scheduled to play matches on Stadium 17 (called Court 17 then), and both were back on the show court on Day 2 to start their journeys at the 2024 US Open.
Nothing like a stroll down memory lane to rekindle some feelings, right?
The results in 2023 were mixed, with de Minaur winning his third-round evening match against Nicolas Jarry immediately before Boulter lost in straight sets to American Peyton Stearns the Brit’s attempt to make the fourth-round at a Grand Slam for the first time.
Last year's Big Apple night was traded for toasty, bright sunshine over Stadium 17 this year, and instead of “The Demon” taking center stage to start, it was Boulter who was first up, and she succeeded in exorcising some of last year’s demons.
“I wanted to go out and start the day well,” Boulter said. “I wanted to set [Alex] up in a good way and I’m hoping that I’ve started that and we can keep that trend going.”
It took almost two and a half hours, but Boulter, the No. 31 seed, pulled out a 5-7, 6-2, 6-1 victory over Aliaksandra Sasnovich to advance to the second round of the US Open. The first serve—or, more accurately, the lack of consistency on the first serve—told the story of the first two sets, with Boulter only making 44 percent of her first serves in the opening frame, with Sasnovich doing her one “better” with her 38 percent in the second. And it was only fitting that Sasnovich double-faulted on Boulter’s set point in the second.
In short, those two frames felt a lot like what love could be described as in many instances: a roller-coaster.
Boulter soon went through the emotional ringer again, a 16-point game on her serve to begin the final set in which she faced break point four times. All four times, the Brit came through to save all of Sasnovich’s opportunities, and then the No. 31 seed closed out the game on her first game-point chance with a forehand winner down the line to claim the crucial first game.
Even though Boulter once again posted a 44 percent first-serve percentage in the third set (and 46 percent for the match), she proved steady during most of the baseline exchanges and continued to dictate the points against the qualifier and world No. 107.
Before his fourth-round match last year, de Minaur told USOpen.org that it was Boulter—who is well on pace to finish 2024 with her highest-ever year-end ranking—who improved his outlook on and off the court en route to his career year in 2023. The rise up the rankings is a joint effort, with Boulter playing in New York as a seeded player in a Grand Slam for the very first time.
A higher love, if you will. Cue Steve Winwood.
“It definitely feels different,” Boulter said about playing as a seed in tournaments. “It is a role that I am getting used to. I think there are always little perks that you get being seeded. You work for those moments and you work for those byes in those tournaments … It’s not a massive goal for me, [but] it is important to keep moving up the rankings. If I’m going up the seeds, then I’m headed in the right direction … and it’s a privilege to be in that position. It just means that I’m playing good tennis."
In short order, Boulter put the tennis aside and became part of the support system that de Minaur needed as he took the court just under two hours after the conclusion of her victory. Going up against a tough opponent in Marcos Giron and the largely partisan pro-American crowd backing the former UCLA Bruin and NCAA singles champion was tough enough, but de Minaur was playing his first singles match on tour since the Round of 16 win at Wimbledon against Arthur Fils, where the Australian suffered a hip injury on match point that eventually forced him to withdraw from the tournament as he was set to play Novak Djokovic in the quarterfinals. (He also pulled out of the Olympics after making the trip to Paris.)
For a player whose court coverage has been the bedrock in his rise to career-high world ranking of No. 6 that he achieved just last month, de Minaur’s malady has affected him just as much mentally as it has physically, admitting after the match that he is not 100% and that it’s been tough for him to dial back and not go full bore to retrieve every single shot.
De Minaur also said after his 6-3, 6-4, 5-7, 6-4 win over Giron that his injury is rare in the sports world, the main reason why the initial diagnosis from his doctors of being sidelined for three weeks before returning to full health has been so off.
"It’s really such a unique and new injury. A normal MRI scan wouldn’t be able to detect this injury,” de Minaur said to USOpen.org. “In the past it just got branded as osteitis pubis [inflammation in the joint between the left and right pubic bones], which I’ve gone through in the past. Because the technology has improved over the past years, they’ve come up with being able to see that my fiber cartilage had just peeled off from the junction into the adductor.
“Therefore, the research on this particular injury isn’t as thorough. You’ve only got four or five years worth of research. That’s why there’s so much unknown with this injury and not a lot of players have gone through it.”
But Boulter went through a serious ailment that left her questioning her tennis future, when she was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome in 2016 and missed most of 2019 dealing with that illness along with a stress fracture in her back. Soon after her match Tuesday, Boulter, wearing a baseball cap and a purple shirt, joined de Minaur’s players’ box midway through the contest against Giron to continue to support him through the tough match—and the pain he surely was feeling—to carry him, at least emotionally, to the finish line.
“She’s been a great help because she’s gone through this. She’s done it a couple of times,” de Minaur said. “So she’s been there every step of the way, and she’s one of the few people that has known exactly what’s been going through my head every stage of the process. There’s been a lot of doubts.”
When those doubts crept in, Boulter and de Minaur were there for each other, and, once more, they were together again on Stadium 17, something that de Minaur surely had in mind even before first ball.
“I had thought about that. For me, personally, [Stadium] 17 has been a great court,” de Minaur said. “I feel like I’ve played some great matches on that court and I’ve always enjoyed it and I think it always brings a great atmosphere out there. Katie didn’t have her best start [today] but she managed to turn it around. She got the win so I just thought I had to do my job and have a happy household.”
Boulter and de Minaur proved today that love, indeed, conquers all … or, at the very least, Stadium 17.
