We give each other grief but we don’t take it to heart. It’s always fun!
Tennis love birds KATIE BOULTER and ALEX DE MINAUR reveal all about their romance, why they both adore Jamie Vardy… and even tackle Mail Sport’s Mr & Mrs quiz!
ALEX DE MINAUR, world No 11 tennis player and parttime resident of Spain, is sitting in Madrid on an el Clasico weekend describing, deadpan, how he is a follower of leicester City now.
This revelation, it must be said, has required a little encouragement from the individual sitting to his left.
That would be Katie Boulter, world No 28 and British No 1, whose introduction of De Minaur to the sights of her beloved leicestershire have included a drive past the King Power Stadium and trip into the club shop, which saw him leave with a leicester City football. Though how personally motivated he was to possess one remains a matter of some conjecture.
‘She made me buy a leicester football,’ De Minaur relates, breaking into a grin.
‘That’s a lie! You bought that by yourself,’ Boulter retorts.
Anyway, Boulter has the photographic evidence of the trip. ‘I drove him up to the door and told him to get out so I could take a picture, to prove he’s a leicester City supporter. So I have that on my phone.’
It seems appropriate to test De Minaur’s knowledge of his ‘new’ team’s personnel, by requesting the Australian name a favourite player. ‘ You can’t go away from Vardy,’ he replies, eliciting an enthusiastic ‘ nailed it!’ from Boulter. ‘ He’s iconic. He’s a character and I’ve enjoyed watching him through the years.’
De Minaur’s other club is Real Madrid. ‘ My mum was born in Madrid and she was a hardcore Madrid fan so there’s a connection,’ he says.
De Minaur and Boulter have been together for four years now, though it only takes half an hour in their company to see why the relationship works. They have contrasting personalities, Boulter the more extrovert and relaxed in an environment like this, De Minaur a wry, drole foil to her — and a readiness to take the rise out of each other.
Boulter’s Instagram posts have featured De Minaur being serenaded by the entire occupants of the bar they were in on his last birthday. ‘Happy Birthday my love! Some world class birthday embarrassment,’ she wrote.
Then there is De Minaur in his Grinch Christmas jumper stating ‘Merry Whatever’ and Boulter’s matching one, declaring: ‘He hates Christmas.’ Her idea, she admits.
‘That, from day one, has been our relationship,’ 25-year-old De Minaur relates. ‘We give each other a little crap from time to time and don’t take it to heart. It’s always fun.’
There was a time, as their relationship was starting, when one would head down for breakfast at tournaments 10 minutes before the other and they would sit at different tables to maintain secrecy about it. But this conversation reflects the way they are becoming comfortable about their public persona as a couple — they are here in Madrid at the high- profile laureus awards, where they stepped on to the red carpet.
Beyond the jokes, it is evident those differences in personality have helped each other in the tennis pressure pot.
THEY hit together sometimes, most typically off-the- cuff, outside of training routines, perhaps when one of them wants to rally under the lights and there is no one else around to do it.
‘Obviously when I’m having a tough day and I feel like I need to beat him at targets. There is the odd day like that!’ 27-year- old Boulter adds.
‘ I’m the confi- booster,’ De Minaur observes. ‘ That’s what I am here for!’
‘ He helps me get a bit of confidence,’ Boulter rejoins, before they embark on more earnest observations about their partnership. ‘I would say you are probably better at it than me with this. I would say that you help me more than I help you,’ she tells him.
He disagrees — and though his tennis has taken him to eight career titles and a top-10 ranking in February, Boulter’s approach to the sport, and life in general, seems to have introduced him to a different way of dealing with things. For De Minaur, defeat can be a calamity, something he agonises over for a week or more.
‘I get more stressed out,’ he says. ‘I would probably take at least a week to digest a tough loss and suffer more.’
For Boulter, there is a broader perspective borne of personal loss — her Wimbledon second round win over former world No 1 Karolina Pliskova two years ago came two days after the death of her grandmother — and struggle with injuries, including a back stress fracture which put her out for nearly nine months from 2019.
‘I would say I’m a little bit more relaxed than him,’ she says. ‘I’ve been through a few different moments in my career which have led me to probably not care as much about tennis and care more about my family.
‘I know there are a lot of bigger things happening in the world and I think that’s where I try to go a little bit with Alex, because he can live and die by every single
‘Our world is full of stress. We want to escape that and be calm and happy. That’s what we are for each other’
match. I’ve had time away from the game and that just changed my mind a little bit.
‘I have to remind myself it’s just a tennis match. There are so many other things that could be worse if you have a bad day. Just appreciate that we’re both out there, playing, injury-free and enjoying it. That’s the biggest thing for me. It’s important to remind yourself that it’s a privilege to be out there on the court.’
The psychological aspect seems to be where each learns from the other most? ‘ Yeah,’ says De Minaur. ‘On my side, I think I’ve learned a lot from being with Katie. One side of it has been perspective. That’s been a big thing for me, not to live and die by results.
‘The beauty of this is we’ve both been in different situations that the other hasn’t, so we can both advise on those situations and at times I need to learn to chill out a bit more. I get all this advice from her and how she looks at things.’
Both also describe taking inspiration from the differing technical aspects of each other’s game. Boulter is a free hitter, whose powerful groundstrokes are a trademark. De Minaur is consistent from the baseline.
‘It’s been quite important for me to be able to look at matches in a different way and play a little bit more freely,’ says De Minaur.
‘Obviously watching Katie play and see her smack winners on the court, left, right and centre, I’ve decided I want to do that as well, because it looks fun! Making your opponent run. I’ve definitely tried to be a little more aggressive.’
Boulter interjects. ‘ I’ve told him I’m so sick of watching three-hour matches that he needs to speed up his game and get on with it quicker!
‘But I’ve also been asking myself, “Can I be a bit more solid, like him? Can I find that consistency?”. He has been a very good influence on me and I’m starting to benefit from that.’
Boulter’s first WTA 500 tournament victory at the San Diego Open in March took her into the top 30 for the first time, cementing her flying start to this year.
It also completed a rare double in the sport, coming a day after De Minaur retained the Mexican Open and flew to the US in the early hours to watch Boulter’s final. Not since Kim Clijsters and Lleyton Hewitt won at Indian Wells in 2003 are a boyfriend and girlfriend thought to have won singles titles in the same week.
In her post-match comments, Boulter-Bou thanked De Minaur for mmaking that journey.
‘I want to say a small special thank you to my boyfriend,’ she said. ‘He finished last night at midnight and I really want to embarrass him. He got a 4.15am taxi this morning and 6am flight to be here, so I do appreciate it.’
The jokes are never far from the surface. ‘I would say the one thing about our relationship that I love is just stability,’ Boulter says. ‘It’s not stressful. We’ve got stressful enough lives as it is and just to have a bit of calmness — that’s what Alex is for me.’ De Minaur concurs: ‘100 per cent.’
‘ But I do stress you out!’ Boulter says.
‘Well, yes, from time to time.’ The appearance of a ring on her finger in January, sending rumours of an engagement into overdrive, might be a case in point.
‘It was just after a visit to my jewellery sponsor!’ Boulter relates. ‘Every time I go there, we go through jewellery and it just so happens that there’s always one ring that I fall in love with that fits on one finger.
‘I’d been wearing it for months and nobody noticed so I thought, “We’re fine, no problem”. Then the moment one person noticed I was in serious trouble!
‘We had a few questions about it. I love wearing rings, but there’s nothing on this finger for a while.’
So where is the ring now? ‘Still in the box. I didn’t want to spark any conversation.’
It is a relationship which left both rather bewildered when they found themselves on opposing Great Britain and Australia teams in January at the United Cup team tournament.
They were not across the net from each other, but there was the introductory handshake between competing players.
‘I didn’t enjoy it that much,’ Boulter relates. ‘We were still acting completely normal, like we would at an ordinary tournament, but that weird moment where we had to shake hands?
‘ I’m pretty sure I’ve never shaken hands with him in my whole entire life and it was, “What am I doing?”.’
THEspotlight will be at its fiercest two months from now when they arrive at Wimbledon, where there was relentless focus last year. They have not yet decided where they will be staying during this year’s tournament.
‘I know we won’t be in the same house, but we haven’t decided whether we’re going to be staying at home, in a hotel, or house,’ Boulter says. ‘We’re just waiting to see how we’re feeling with it and make a last-minute decision, I think.’
This, rather than the white heat of Wimbledon fortnight, seems the appropriate time to test their knowledge of each other with a Mail Sport ‘Mr and Mrs’ quiz, which they gamely submit themselves to.
Things begin less than encouragingly when De Minaur fails to name Boulter’s favourite colour and challenges her claim that it is blue, not pink.
Boulter does no better on his favourite sports star outside tennis, nor his favourite film. ‘Proof that you know nothing!’ De Minaur contends, laughing at Boulter’s struggle with the test.
This conversation suggests the contrary. ‘The world we live in is full of stress, drama and tough moments,’ says De Minaur. ‘You want to be able to escape that environment and be in a calm, happy place. That’s what we’ve managed to be for each other.’
■ The 25th Laureus Sports Awards took place on April 22 in Madrid, celebrating the leading names in sport. Visit www.laureus.com