Boulter reaches Japan Open semi-final and reclaims British No 1 spot

Katie Boulter battled back from a set down to beat Antonia Ruzic 3-6, 6-3, 6-3 in the Japan Open quarter-final in Osaka, a win that sends her into the last four and restores her as British No 1, according to Sky Sports Tennis.

The eighth seed looked in trouble after dropping the first set and then being broken in the opening game of the second, but she levelled for 1-1 in game four. Ruzic moved back ahead in the following game before Boulter drew level again in game six and took the crucial break in game eight to force a decider, as detailed by Tennis365.

Boulter then surged into a 5-1 lead in the third set courtesy of two early breaks and served out the match to book her semi-final place.

“[Ruzic] is a really good player,” Boulter said in her on-court interview on Sky Sports, reported by Tennis365. “She's extremely tough to beat.”

“I did extremely well to come back into it in the second set but she was swinging at everything hard. I felt like anything that I was giving her wasn't bothering her. Full credit to her,” she added.

“I tried to hang tough, and in the end I started to play a bit better. I was lucky in the second set, but in the end I felt like I did well to stay there.”

The victory lifts Boulter from No 58 to No 48 in the Live Rankings, a 10-place jump that takes her back above Sonay Kartal, who had overtaken her as British No 1 barely a week earlier.

Kartal had surged 121 places to a career-high ranking after reaching the final of the Wuhan Open, a run that made her British No 1 for the first time in her career, ahead of Boulter, Emma Raducanu, Francesca Jones and Harriet Dart, according to Yahoo Sports.

Before the win over Ruzic, Boulter's ranking points total stood at 1,071, just 26 behind Kartal's 1,097. Reaching the semi-finals lifts that total to 1,115, enough to leapfrog Kartal, while going on to win the title would take her to 1,267 points and likely into the world's top 45, Yahoo Sports reported.

Boulter had reached the quarter-finals with a commanding 6-2, 6-1 win over Viktorija Golubic, winning 89 per cent of her first-serve points and saving the only break point she faced, per Yahoo Sports.

She will next face Katerina Siniakova, who beat qualifier Mary Stoiana 6-1, 6-2 to reach the semi-final. It will be the pair's second career meeting after Boulter won their previous encounter 4-6, 6-2, 6-1 on the clay in Madrid in 2025.

Boulter described the Czech as “extremely dangerous” ahead of the semi-final, according to Tennis365.