There are, Katie Boulter reckons, two main paths to success in tennis – especially in women’s tennis. You can, in the first instance, be a teenage prodigy, the kind of freak who blazes on to the scene like a comet, taking on players double your age and beating them, all while studying for your A-levels . But this road is fraught with danger.

“In some ways you want to be that child who’s going to be the next big thing, a superstar from a young age, but there are caveats to it. Things that people don’t see that can be pretty brutal,” Boulter says. ‘I’ve seen it throughout a lot of people’s careers. Some people are made to handle it and some people aren’t. It’s interesting to watch. I don’t personally wish for it.’

And then there’s the other path. The slow, winding route to glory, away

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