It is both disconcerting and heartbreaking to watch a superb athlete fall from grace. Witness 21-year-old Eugenie Bouchard.
A year ago, Bouchard was the It Girl of WTA tennis. Blessed with talent, charm and good looks, Bouchard had a sensational 2014 season, reaching the semi-finals at two Grand Slam events, the Australian and French championships, and making it to the final at Wimbledon, where she was very soundly beaten by the Czech Republic’s Petra Kvitova.
She rose to number-five in the world, the highest a Canadian tennis player has ever flown.
It’s been downhill since Wimbledon. She did little the rest of the season, though the round-of-16 at the US Open is nothing to be sneezed at. In the fall, she showed very little at the year-end World Tour Finals.
In December, Bouchard cast aside her long-time coach, Nick Saviano. He has been replaced by Sam Sumyk, the former coach of former number-one Victoria Azerenka of Belarus.
Not much changed this season from the second half of last season. Bouchard, still ranked seventh in the world, has lost eight straight matches to players ranked 35th or worse.
This past weekend, she hit bottom. After deciding to play at the last minute in a Federation Cup competition against Romania, Bouchard embarrassed herself both off and on the court.
First, she refused to shake the hand of her first-match opponent, the 69th ranked Alexandra Dulgheru, at a pre-match ceremony. Then, she got hammered on the court.
“It wasn’t personal,” Bouchard said about the handskake, or lack there of. “I just don’t believe in wishing my opponent good luck before a match.”
The slight was not lost on Dulgheru. The next day, she overwhelmed Bouchard in straight sets.
On Sunday, looking sometimes petulant, sometimes lost in the clouds, sometimes completely rudderless and forever joyless, Bouchard lost in three sets to Andreea Mitu, the world number 104, winning but a single game in the third set.
Montreal Gazette columnist Jack Todd described Bouchard’s play resembling “a malfunctioning robot.”
Stephanie Myles is Canada’s finest tennis writer. She has followed Bouchard since her early teens.
Myles spoke to RCI from her home in Montreal.
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