Muchova dismantles Boulter 6-1, 6-0 in 58 minutes to reach US Open third round

Karolina Muchova needed just 58 minutes to end Katie Boulter's 2026 US Open, winning 6-1, 6-0 in their second-round match on Wednesday, September 2. Boulter, Britain's number one, managed only one game in the entire match — the opening game of the first set. After that, she did not win another (BBC Sport).

Muchova, the seventh seed and a two-time US Open semi-finalist, hit 14 winners and made just nine unforced errors — mistakes that come from a player's own racket rather than being forced by the opponent. Boulter, by contrast, committed 15 unforced errors in the first set alone (BBC Sport; Straits Times).

The match was moved to the roofed Louis Armstrong Stadium, one of the US Open's two largest show courts, which seats around 14,000 spectators. The roof keeps play going regardless of weather — and on this day, it also kept the crowd under cover for a contest that was over almost before it began (Rediff).

A 6-0 set — known in tennis as a "bagel" — is rare at Grand Slam level, where both players are ranked inside the world's top 100. To lose one is difficult enough. To lose the second set without winning a game, having already been broken repeatedly in the first, tells you everything about how one-sided this was. Muchova, a Wimbledon runner-up, has the all-court game to punish any opponent on an off day. Boulter simply could not find the court often enough to test her.

Muchova now advances to the third round, where she will face fellow American Emma Navarro, who beat Caty McNally in an all-American second-round contest on the same day (US Open). Navarro versus Muchova pairs two players who know their way around the later stages of a hard-court Slam — Muchova reached the last four at Flushing Meadows in 2023, and Navarro made the semi-finals in 2024.

For Boulter, the defeat is a sharp disappointment at a tournament where she arrived as the leading British woman. The scoreline will sting: one game in 58 minutes is a sobering measure of the gap between a dangerous player on form and one searching for rhythm on the biggest stage.

Muchova, though, is a player who raises her level at the Slams. When her timing clicks and the unforced errors stay in single digits, she is among the hardest opponents to break down on either tour. The third round will tell us whether this level holds.