COMING from a set down, Great Britain’s Katie Boulter knocked off Ukrainian sixth seed Marta Kostyuk, 5-7 6-2 6-2 to take out the WTA 500 San Diego Open. Just a day after boyfriend Alex de Minaur won at Acapulco and made the quick dash to watch her courtside, Boulter made it two from two for the couple this weekend, with the victory in two hours and 13 minutes.

“I don’t know what just happened,” Boulter said post-match. “This week has been very, very special for so many different reasons. This one is pretty amazing, I’ve worked very hard for it, I played some incredible tennis all week.”

Boulter was ranked 49th coming into the tournament and by taking out the trophy, became the lowest ranked player to win a WTA 500 title in three years. For the first time in the Brit’s career, she will enter the Top 30, reaching 27th overall in the world and placing herself inside the seeded positions for Grand Slams, and perhaps her home Slam at Wimbledon.

“Today was a complete battle, with myself as well, because I was a little bit nervous,” Boulter said. “But I managed to get over the line, and that I’m very proud of.

“A lot of it was about me staying as tough as I possibly could mentally, and I managed to keep my cool and actually kind of went within myself and calmed myself down a lot. I think that really helped me, and then I started to relax and play through shots a little bit more.”

It looked like a one-sided match early when Kostyuk raced out to a 5-2 lead, though Boulter was not willing to give up just yet, breaking back to level the scores at five games apiece. The higher ranked player got back on top and broke in the 12th game of the set off a double fault, for the Ukrainian to win 7-5 off her seventh set point.

From there though, it was all Boulter, breaking early to go 3-1 up, and then won three of the next four games to take out the set 6-2 with a 49 per cent win rate on return. She continued that form into the third and in an almost identical method of victory, the Brit served out the match and took home the trophy, 5-7 6-2 6-2.

Boulter won 67 and 47 per cent of her first and second serve points, while breaking seven times to four throughout the match, and though her consistency was shaky – two aces for a whopping 13 double faults – she got through it to claim the victory.