Alicia Barnett and Olivia Nicholls: 'Winning grand slams isn't unrealistic'

When Alicia Barnett and Olivia Nicholls think back to the first tournament they played together six years ago – the amateur University Games – even they are struck by their rise. They went from semi-professional graduates to starring for Great Britain at the biggest women’s tennis team tournament in the world – the Billie Jean King Cup. “We’ve literally played every single level together, which is quite a nice story really,” Nicholls says.

When Great Britain snuck into this month’s BJK Cup finals in Glasgow, few predicted a run to their first semi-final since 1981. Even fewer picked Barnett and Nicholls – a little-known, late-blooming doubles pair making their debut – as the players who would help carry them through.

Before this year, maybe Barnett and Nicholls would not have believed it either. It was only in May that they played at WTA level for the first time and – at the ages of 29 and 28 respectively – they freely admit “we are no spring chickens”. In Glasgow, though, they brought an energy and fight not seen from the British team since 2019.

Their key has been to treat an individual sport as a team one. “I’m rubbish on my own,” Nicholls says. “I’d be useless if I was travelling alone.”

Both were good but not standout juniors and Norwich-born Nicholls had never competed internationally before going pro. Instead, they went to university – Barnett to Northwestern University in Illinois on a tennis scholarship, and Nicholls to Loughborough University – where playing in a team was more important than ever.