Nottingham Open preview: Burrage faces Boulter in rare all-British WTA final
She was down 1-4 in the second set and faced four breakpoints in a game which would have given her experienced opponent a huge 5-1 lead.
She may have joined three ITF finals in the first five months of the season, but the 26-year-old was largely lacking on tour coming into this week.
She owned only one WTA main draw win since the end of last year's grass-court swing. Furthermore, her career-wide best results were four WTA 250 quarter-finals, two in Nottingham.
The 26-year-old, who was ranked as high as No. 82 before her back injury in 2019, has exclusively defeated lower-ranked players en route to the final.
She has beaten three fellow Brits (including Emily Appleton, and Harriet Dart) and one Ukrainian lucky loser (Daria Snigur), and could win the silverware without facing a top 130 player.
She is trying to become the second wildcard to win Nottingham after Karolina Pliskova defeated Alison Riske-Amritraj in 2016. There are seven pro titles to her name, including W60 Canberra in January, but none have been outside hard or carpet.
She is 0-2 in grass-court ITF finals, most recently losing at 100K Southsea in 2018.
Jodie Burrage made it a perfect week for the local fans after defeating Alize Cornet, 7-5, 7-5, in the semi-finals. She served to stay in both sets and even stood two points from dropping the opener.
At the end, it turned out to be her 10th career top 100 win at all levels, the sixth on British grass and the third of this week alone.
She had a minuscule track record on tour before this tournament. The 24-year-old had only four WTA main draw scalps, all of which came in the 2022 season, although they included wins over Paula Badosa and Petra Martic in Eastbourne. Furthermore, she had never been even a quarter-finalist at any event above W100 level.
Few would have expected a player who lost to world No. 209 Yuriko Miyazaki in the first round of W100 Surbiton last week, to make the final in this one. She started with a three-hour, third-set tiebreak win over Tereza Martincova, despite making 100+ unforced errors, and dismissed third seed Magda Linette and Magdalena Frech.
None of her five ITF titles, the biggest and latest of which came at W60 Croissy-Beaubourg in France earlier this year, have been on grass courts. However, the only time she did play a professional final on grass courts, she managed to push then world No. 98 and top seed Dalma Galfi into three sets in last year's W100 Ilkley.
Head-to-head: Katie Boulter leads 2-0 despite being taken the distance in the 2017 Birmingham qualifying and the final of W60 Canberra in January. She is likely to return to the top 100 regardless of the Sunday result, but Jodie Burrage must win this match, the first all-Brit WTA final since 1977, to confirm her top 100 debut.
