Katie Boulter suffered a first-round exit at the Linz Open in Austria, losing in straight sets to Elena-Gabriela Ruse on Monday.
Ruse edged a tight contest by getting the better of a couple of tie-breakers, coming through 7-6 (6-3) 7-6 (6-2) against the British No 3.
Boulter got off to a sluggish start, being broken in her opening two service games of the match, but battled back from 3-1 down to restore parity at 4-4 in the first set.
Ruse – ranked 25 spots below Boulter at 87th in the world – would go on to comfortably take the opening tie-break but the Romanian was broken immediately to start the second set.
Boulter would fail to capitalise, however, as she was broken straight back – and again after nudging 3-2 ahead.
Serving to stay in the match down 6-5, Boulter saved a match point at 30-40 and would ultimately hold to force another breaker.
But, after taking a 2-1 lead in the second-set decider, Boulter lost the next six points to end her tournament early and get her 2026 clay-court season off to a disappointing start.
Ruse will next face Ukraine’s Dayana Yastremska or American seventh seed Ann Li in the last 16.
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