Katie Boulter hires Sharapova’s former coach to revive career after dismal 2025
Katie Boulter is hopeful that she can rediscover her best form and return towards the top of the WTA Tour this year with the help of Maria Sharapova’s former coach Michael Joyce.Boulter opted to split with her previous longtime coach, Biljana Veselinovic, at the end of last year after an incredibly difficult season in which she fell from her career high ranking of No 23 at the end of 2024 to her current ranking of No 113.She quickly hired Joyce, a former player who has worked with Johanna Konta, Jessica Pegula, Victoria Azarenka and Eugenie Bouchard, with his most recent partnership a four-year tenure with Ashlyn Krueger.“Personally I always really liked him,” said Boulter.“I thought he’s done a really good job with a lot of other players … Jessie, Ashlyn.
I feel like he’s been around a long time on tour,He’s someone that I didn’t really get to know that much until I spent time with him on court, and I really like his style,“I feel like it’s going well at the moment,I think we’re all quite calm, which really helps because I’ve got that energy around me, which is important for me as a tennis player,”For a long time, it seemed as if Boulter would have to compete in the the Australian Open qualifying tournament and fight her way through three rounds to reach the main draw.
She had been the highest ranked player on the qualifying entry list on Sunday, the day the qualifying draw was sorted, and she learned she had made it into the main draw only once the draw had come out,“Saturday and Sunday were pretty stressful, to be completely honest,” she said,Boulter, who will marry her fiance, Alex de Minaur, this year, said her impending wedding ensured that 2026 would be one of the best years of her life and that that thought had imbued her with positive energy for her career,“I’m getting married this year,” she said,“It’s going to be an unbelievable year, one of the best ones in my life, no matter what happens on the tennis court.
“I think for me that’s already given me a positive push.I feel like having a new coach, having a new setup, everything is kind of fresh and exciting again.Whereas I feel like I was dragging my feet a little bit at the end of last year just trying to get through the whole entire year without injuries.”In the absence of Jack Draper, Cameron Norrie will be the highest-ranked British player at a grand slam tournament, another milestone as he looks to follow up a resurgent 2025 season in which he rose from No 91 in the ATP rankings to his current position of No 26, reaching the quarter-finals of Wimbledon and even defeating Carlos Alcaraz, the No 1, at the Paris Masters.Norrie said: “It was definitely looking difficult at one point in the year, but we made some good changes with my team.
I think I was able to build a lot of momentum throughout the summer,There were a lot of obstacles, as always, but I was able to play my best tennis in some really big matches and some grand slam deep runs too, which helped,“Then to finish the year, especially indoors where typically I’ve not really had the best results, to beat a world No 1 like Alcaraz in the Masters 1000 was massive,And then to back it up again in the next week in a 250 and beat a lot of players that I was very close in ranking,”Norrie, the 26th seed, will begin against France’s Benjamin Bonzi.
But the slice of luck that allowed Boulter to reach the main draw did not endure when the names were revealed as she will face Belinda Bencic, the in-form 10th seed, who won all five of her singles matches at the United Cup, including against Iga Swiatek.Boulter said: “For me it’s another opportunity.I’m just going to go out and swing.I really don’t think there’s any pressure.I don’t think there’s anyone in this room that thinks I’m going to win that match.
So I’m excited for it.”
Barbs and a betrayal as Jenrick joins Reform after Badenoch gives him boot
Robert Jenrick made a dramatic defection to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK on Thursday, declaring the Conservatives “rotten” and a “failed” party, after being sacked by Kemi Badenoch for plotting against her.In a high-stakes day for the future of the British right, Jenrick became the most senior Tory to switch allegiance to Reform, launching into a fiery and personal denunciation of his former colleagues in the shadow cabinet.The defection of Jenrick deepens the schism on the right of politics as Badenoch struggles to keep the Conservatives together in the face of a string of high-profile moves to Reform.The former shadow justice secretary, who stood for the Tory leadership against Badenoch, said the Conservative party in Westminster “isn’t sorry, it doesn’t get it, it hasn’t changed, it won’t change, it can’t change”.“In opposition, it is easy to paper over these cracks, but the divisions and delusions are still there,” he said at a hastily reorganised press conference with Farage in Westminster on Thursday
‘Not so clever after all’: how Robert Jenrick was ejected before he defected
Four days before Robert Jenrick was kicked out of the Tories for planning to defect to Reform UK, he spoke “at length” with Kemi Badenoch on the phone about party strategy. The week before he had sat through a shadow cabinet awayday taking copious notes.While the Tory leader had been aware for some time of speculation over her shadow justice secretary’s future, she had no hard proof of his plans, so it was business as usual. That all changed just 24 hours after their one-to-one conversation.On Monday, senior figures in Badenoch’s office were sent screenshots of what one said was “irrefutably” Jenrick’s entire resignation speech from what sources claimed was a mole in his office, along with the accompanying media plan
Treachery and stupidity to the fore as Robert Jenrick defects to Reform | John Crace
One is too many and 1,000 never enough. Addiction is a tricky business. What starts as fun inevitably, insidiously, tears away the soul. And there are signs that Nigel Farage’s press conference habit is getting out of control. He started off at one a week
Robert Jenrick: from remainer to rightwinger with ruthless reputation
For a long time, Robert Jenrick’s transformation from a David Cameron-supporting remainer to an anti-immigration rightwinger did not convince many of his political peers – least of all Nigel Farage.Only last year, the Reform UK leader was describing him as a “fraud” and saying he was sceptical that Jenrick was genuine, dubbing him “Robert the Generic, Robert the Remainer and Robert the I Don’t Stand Particularly for Anything at all”.“There are people in politics who are there through conviction and there are people in politics who are there because they want to reach rank, position and all that comes with that,” he said at the time.“I’m really still not sure about Jenrick, to be honest with you, I’m really not sure.”Now, the verdicts of some of Jenrick’s Tory colleagues on his political behaviour are similarly damning and centre on his unbridled ambitions
Tory defectors: who has already joined Reform UK and who may follow?
With Robert Jenrick’s defection, the number of current or former parliamentarians to have joined Reform from the Conservatives has risen to 18. Some of the best known are likely to be prominent voices for Nigel Farage’s party in the run-up to the next election.There are others within the Conservative party thought to have considered their position in recent months. But Farage has claimed that the value of such additions to his ranks is dropping – and said he would accept no further defectors from the Tories after the May elections, arguing that by then his party’s strength would be so clear that they would have little to add.Here are some of the most prominent figures on both sides of that divide
‘The mask has slipped’: What have Jenrick and Farage said about each other in the past?
Like other Conservative recruits to Reform UK, Robert Jenrick’s defection has come with no shortage of lacerating past comments about Nigel Farage and his other new colleagues.When Nadhim Zahawi defected to Reform on Monday, Conservative headquarters were quick to unload the former chancellor’s previous comments about Farage on to social media.In the case of Jenrick, below is just some of the ammunition they have been drawing on once again.Today I took forward a bill to stop the two-tier sentencing rules that come into force in just 18 days. While Nigel Farage swanned off to Cheltenham to forget his troubles
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