Katie Boulter told she is suffering from the same ‘horrendous’ issue that Novak Djokovic once had after Queen’s defeat

She was without hope, but as that main weapon vanished, the Russian only grew in influence.

The youngster turned the match around, impressively, and apologised to the crowd in her on-court interview for dumping out their top-ranked player.

Annabel Croft reviews Katie Boulter’s Queen’s performance

Speaking live on the BBC immediately after Katie Boulter’s disappointing defeat, Croft simply had to analyse that outstanding issue which saw her compatriot blow her one-set lead.

She began: ‘Well, she came out of the blocks quickly, and she was literally thumping those serves. And when her serve is firing, it’s the nucleus of her game and enables her to get on the front foot and start to really dictate the play so that opponents can’t get her on the move.

So she was looking to strike into the corners. She was hitting very clean balls. She was completely taking time away from Shnaider, not allowing Shnaider to take her own game to Katie Boulter. 

‘But as you say, suddenly the serve started to unravel a little bit, and even though she got off to such a fast start in this match, she wasn’t able to maintain that intense level that she brought out onto the match.’

Then asked how one could possibly fix such an issue mid-match, Croft sympathised: ‘Well the one thing you want is the loose wrist, you want everything to be very flowy and effortless. You want to be relaxed, and that’s why you sometimes see players walk up to the line, they take the ball and they start doing things with their shoulders to try and relax the shoulders and then they want a very loose ball toss that has no tension in it. And you don’t want anything to be rigid.

‘The minute the rigidness starts to come in, everything as you say, has a chain reaction through the body and it starts to get clunky, and you overthink every single aspect, and it’s almost about tricking your brain and just thinking of flowing out there, and just thinking of relaxation and trying to get rid of those thoughts and doubts of a creeping in. 

‘We’ve seen it across the sport for so many years, where so many players, when they start to get ball toss issues, it starts to become something that’s very mental and it almost doesn’t matter how much you practice it on a practice court. The minute you step onto a match court, when the pressure is on, that’s when these things will start to present themselves.

‘I mean, that, to be fair, Djokovic, early on in his career, he had horrendous problems with the swing. He started to almost do a clean bowl rather than getting any racket head drop behind his head. But he worked so hard mentally to try to overcome that, and actually his serve became one of the biggest weapons.’

What will Katie Boulter’s next tournament be?

Having failed to make a serious run at the Queen’s title, in the first female iteration of the event since 1973, Boulter’s attention must now turn to her next tournament.

Especially given she will have plenty of points to defend, heading to Nottingham as the title holder at this WTA 250 event.

A two-time champion at the tournament, there will be plenty of pressure on Boulter to retain her crown for a third straight year, not least applied by herself.

Hopefully playing doubles this week will have added some lighthearted fun to her schedule, with Boulter and Emma Raducanu potentially set to play doubles at Wimbledon together as well.

If she wants to give herself the best possible chance to succeed at Wimbledon, a strong run there will be paramount to put today’s loss behind her and work on the glaring issues that emerged.