Bouchard has talent, but not focus, for tennis elite
Bouchard’s inconsistency comes at a time when the women’s field is wide open
If she weren’t so good at tennis, it would be easy to write off Genie Bouchard. Lump her with Anna Kournikova as yet another player whose looks were more notable than her tennis, and let her pursue her Twitter dates, her swimsuit shoots and one very public lawsuit without more fuss. It’s her life, after all.
But dammit, the woman can play tennis. At her best, she has the speed and power to play with anyone on the WTA tour not currently named Serena Williams.
Even in the most ragged of her losses (and there have been piles of those since she peaked with that Wimbledon final against Petra Kvitova in 2014) there are stretches when Bouchard appears almost unbeatable. She moves, she hits with aggression and authority, she dominates.
And then, like one of our brief tastes of spring weather, all that vanishes. She sprays the ball like her racket is a T-shirt cannon, she seems to collapse inside, her concentration vanishes and her opponent (more often than not less skilled than her) takes control as Bouchard becomes a mass of nervous tics, finally collapsing under a torrent of self-inflicted wounds.
In Paris last week, we saw all that, the good Genie and the bad Genie. She had a bum ankle as an excuse in the 6-3, 6-0 loss against Latvia’s Anastasija Sevastova, but in truth she appeared to be moving far better than Sevastova. The Latvian woman, however, is a counter-puncher, a judo artist adept at taking Bouchard’s bulllike charges and turning them into a quick point.
Faced with a situation in which she has to adjust mid-match, Bouchard wilted badly in that second set. She is nothing if not stubborn and she kept trying to hit that scorching forehand down the line even when she has twothirds of the court to work with. At the end of the day, she was left staring up at that bagel and wondering where it all went wrong.
That’s the same thing we’ve all been wondering since Bouchard’s career made the final at Wimbledon almost three years ago. It doesn’t seem possible, but she is still only 23 — easily young enough to rescue a declining career that had her ranked 57th in the world going into the French Open.
But first, Bouchard has to want it. Meaning she has to have enough desire to drop all the distractions until she’s back on top. There is, after all, a reason why athletes keep saying “I just have to stay focused” over and over. It’s because that’s all they hear from their support people. It’s also true.
Bouchard almost seems to enjoy putting obstacles in her own path. It’s as though she had the whole world in her corner, but she didn’t like it that way so she set out to undermine her own success.
Whatever. It’s her life, as we said up top. If she wasn’t capable of playing such dazzling tennis at times, we wouldn’t be talking about it. But it’s a pity she is going through all this now, when for the first time in more than a decade, the women’s field is wide open because one Serena Williams is pregnant. Williams will give birth around the time of the U.S. Open, a few weeks before she turns 36.
That means there are at least a dozen women who could conceivably win any given major, with no clear favourite. With Garbine Muguruza losing to Kristina Mladenovic and Venus Williams bowing to Timea Bacsinszky on Sunday, we already know there will be a first-time winner crowned in Paris next Saturday.
After that, Wimbledon is wide open. Ditto the U.S. Open, when Bouchard will be dealing with the considerable distraction of her lawsuit against the USTA. The question is what Bouchard has to gain through that lawsuit — other than money, which she doesn’t need.
What happens after this season is anyone’s guess. Will Serena return as anything like the force she was before her pregnancy? Will a new superstar rise from the fairly long list of talented youngsters pursuing her?
Not so long ago, Genie Bouchard was one of those women. She has a combination of size, speed, power and accuracy possessed by very few women on the tour. If she could only narrow her focus, she might get there. Three years ago, Bouchard was ranked No. 5 in the world. She’s down 52 spots from that high-water mark and will keep tumbling unless she pulls it together.
There are all sorts of stories out there about how Bouchard is putting her demons behind her and making peace with herself — but in the wake of her defeat in Paris, her lawyer was doing a television interview detailing her lawsuit against the USTA. How can any athlete block out that sort of distraction?
That doesn’t mean the case itself has no merit. The question is whether it has merit for Eugenie Bouchard — a young woman who, at this point in her career, appears in need of a GPS she can trust.
She has to have enough desire to drop all the distractions until she’s back on top.