Rain has shaped the entire week at Queen's, and on Friday it caught up with the players. A backlog of matches forced several of them onto court twice in a day, and Katie Boulter used the disruption to produce the best win of her career, beating world No. 2 Elena Rybakina 7-5 2-6 6-4 to reach the semifinals of the WTA 500. Three of the last four are now set - Boulter, Donna Vekic, and teenager Iva Jovic - with the final semifinal place to be decided on Saturday, when Emma Raducanu meets Kamilla Rakhimova in a quarterfinal held over by the weather.
Boulter beats Rybakina for the best win of her career
Boulter had already played once on Friday, beating Jaqueline Cristian 6-3 6-1 in a match held over from earlier in the week, before she returned to face Rybakina. What followed was a win earned against the grain of its own numbers. Rybakina pressed continually on the Boulter serve, and the British wild card defended 52 pressure points on her delivery, winning 37 of them and saving 12 of the 14 break points she faced. She created far less in return, just 29 pressure points of which she won only eight, and still found the two breaks she needed to take it 7-5 2-6 6-4. It was the highest-ranked win of her career, and her first over Rybakina in three meetings after straight-set losses at Wimbledon in 2023 and Indian Wells in 2025. Grass is comfortable ground for her - a two-time Nottingham champion who won the title in Ostrava earlier this season, she is now into her second semifinal of 2026. Her route here had tested her once already: in her opening match she came from a set and a break down to edge Leylah Fernandez 3-6 7-6(4) 7-5, a contest split across two days by rain in which Fernandez came within a couple of points of the win in the third set without ever reaching match point.
Vekic completes a lucky loser's run to the last four
Boulter's semifinal opponent is Donna Vekic, who has gone from the qualifying exit list to the final four. The Croatian reached the main draw only when Marta Kostyuk withdrew with an ankle injury, and she too played twice on Friday, both against Czech opponents. She first completed a 7-6(9) 6-3 win over Marie Bouzkova that had been suspended late in the opening set the previous evening, saving eight of the nine break points she faced and taking a first-set tiebreak that ran to 11-9, then beat Karolina Pliskova 6-4 4-6 6-3. It was the pair's twelfth meeting and Vekic's third win in a row over Pliskova. Now into her second tour-level semifinal of the season, she has not reached a final at this level since Bad Homburg in 2024. The semifinal pairs two players who each came through a two-match Friday, and who last met two years ago on hard court in San Diego, where Boulter won on her way to the title.
Jovic reaches a first grass semifinal by toppling Anisimova
Iva Jovic has reached the first grass-court semifinal of her career, beating second seed Amanda Anisimova 6-2 3-6 6-3. It is the 19-year-old's fourth semifinal of 2026, after Auckland, Hobart and Charleston, and her first win over a top-five player having lost her previous four attempts. Ranked 19th and with little grass-court tennis behind her, she came through against last year's Wimbledon finalist in a match Anisimova undermined with 12 double faults, having earlier beaten Alexandra Eala 6-2 6-2 to reach the quarterfinals. Jovic will face the winner of Saturday's held-over quarterfinal for a place in the final; she leads Kamilla Rakhimova 2-0 and has never met Emma Raducanu.
Raducanu and Rakhimova meet for the last semifinal place
The draw's final quarterfinal goes ahead on Saturday after the weather pushed it back, with Emma Raducanu carrying home interest into it. The Briton has dropped few games this week, beating Anna Blinkova 6-0 6-3 and then ending the run of Sorana Cirstea 6-4 6-2, a win over the world No. 18 who is in the middle of a strong late-career season. Her opponent is Kamilla Rakhimova, the second lucky loser still standing, who denied an all-British quarter by beating home wild card Harriet Dart 5-7 6-1 7-5 in a match that lasted close to three hours. Whoever comes through meets Jovic for a place in the final.