Barbora Krejcikova and Katie Boulter set to continue underwhelming campaigns at WTA 125 event after enduring steep ranking slides

While most players have packed it in for 2025, some players are looking to close their season out with a positive result. No more need it than Barbora Krejcikova and Katie Boulter, who have both endured rough season which have seen them plummet down the rankings.

They have entered in the WTA 125 event in Angers, played on indoor hardcourts. The duo will travel to France with a host of other star players. Fellow Brit Sonay Kartal will be competing against Boulter, with Elsa Jacquemot and Alycia Parks the top two seeds.

It has been a drastic fall for the Czech star. The former number two in the world is just the third seed in this 125 event, in an astonishing turn of events following in from winning the title at Wimbledon just over a year prior.

At the start of the year, Krejcikova was forced to miss out on the Australian Open due to a back injury. This turned out to be quite serious, and it would not be until May when she once again stepped out on court. Thanks to those ranking points she earned at SW19 in 2024, she was still mixing it with the best. However, she needed to pick up more points to keep her up there. Her first win of the year came in just her second tournament, which was at Roland Garros, an event she won back in 2021. However, this would be followed with a defeat to Veronika Kudermetova a round later.

With Wimbledon fast approaching, a early exit at Queens was not ideal. After surviving match points against British duo Harriet Dart and Jodie Burrage to the dismay of a home Eastbourne crowd, she withdrew from her quarter-final clash, with all eyes set on defending the ranking points at Wimbledon. Ultimately, this did not go to plan, losing out to Emma Navarro in the third round. The result of this was the two-time Grand Slam champion falling out of the top 20 down to 78th in the world.

She has managed to claw a few places back after a resurging run to the US Open quarter-finals, where she was outclassed by Jessica Pegula. She will return to the court in Angers after retiring from her third-round match in the Wuhan Open against McCartney Kessler. She will now be hoping to get back to winning ways, with a big 2026 just around the corner.

2024 was a marvellous year for Boulter. Two titles, including a WTA 500 triumph, helped her shoot up the rankings to a high of 23rd in the world. A year later, she is now ranked 100th in the world while having to qualify for big events, in which she was previously seeded for. This is dangerously close to the 104th cut-off for automatically gaining entry to Grand Slam events.

Unlike Krejcikova, the 29-year-old has played a substantial amount of tennis throughout the year, but her form has just fallen off a cliff. She did miss a couple of months with a foot injury after the Australian Open, where she was defeated by Kudermetova. Just one win in three WTA 1000 events led to her collecting her only title of 2025 so far in the WTA 125 Trophee Clarins, held in Paris on clay. She came back from a set down to defeat Chloe Piquet to take home glory.

This would not prove to be the catalyst needed for a big run, with another second-round exit in a major tournament to follow in the French Open, with Madison Keys the perpetrator. She reached the quarter-finals in her title defence at Nottingham, before suffering a shock exit against lucky loser Solana Sierra at Wimbledon. This culminated her three-set victory over Paula Badosa. The dismal form prolonged, with her losing consistently in the early rounds of multiple tournaments, no matter which one. She failed to qualify for the Wuhan Open, showcasing the full demise she had sadly been through in 2025.

Her season seemed complete after retiring against Alexandra Eala in the Hong Kong Open first-round, where more points would fall off her tally with a final in 2024 unsuccessfully defended. In a desperate attempt to end the year on a high, she has made the trip to Angers, with a resurgence firmly on Boulter's mind.