Bouchard optimistic despite early exit
• In a brief career with a craggy trajectory, Eugenie Bouchard is again on the way up, despite a second- round loss at the Australian Open on Wednesday night.
Surprising many, Bouchard, returning from a concussion sustained at the U. S. Open in September, came here leading the WTA in victories this year with seven. She reached the quarterfinals of the tournament in Shenzhen, China, and the final in Hobart, Australia, in the first two weeks of the year.
“I expected to win my first match in April,” said Bouchard, 21, a f ormer top- five player who is now ranked 37th. “I had no idea what was going to happen, zero expectations. I did a little better, I think, than expected.”
Although she lost, 6-4, 6-2, to fourth- seeded Agnieszka Radwanska on Wednesday, Bouchard played freely and sharply, with the aggression that powered her up the rankings two years before.
“I think she’s on the good way to come back, playing much better tennis,” Radwanska said. “So I think in couple months we going to see her more deeper in the Grand Slams.”
That would be familiar territory for Bouchard, who reached the semifinals of the Australian Open and the French Open and the final of Wimbledon in 2014. By year’s end, she entered the top five in the rankings and landed a lucrative management deal with IMG.
But after reaching the quarter-finals here last year, Bouchard’s results fell precipitously, and she lost 15 of the 18 matches she played from late March through August. At the U. S. Open, with Jimmy Connors in her corner, Bouchard seemed back on track at last, reaching the fourth round in singles and winning matches in women’s doubles and mixed doubles.
Just as she seemed to have regained her footing, she slipped and fell on the floor of a physiotherapy room in Arthur Ashe Stadium, hitting her head. The next day, she withdrew from the doubles competitions, and the day after that she withdrew from singles, citing a concussion.
“I was playing a lot and I was really loving it, and it was definitely hard having this feeling of getting knocked down right when things were kind of starting to go well,” she said. “It was definitely hard for me to deal with a little bit. Emotionally as well, I was like, ‘ Why does this have to happen to me?’ ”
“But ‘ everything happens for a reason’ — maybe? And ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ — all these cliché sayings are actually true.”
Bouchard said she continued to experience dizziness, head pain and light sensitivity for much of the fall.
“I had to spend a lot of time in a dark room,” she said. “Let alone walking outside, let alone playing elite tennis, high- performance tennis.
“It just showed me how much I love tennis and how much I miss it, because I was going crazy doing nothing, nothing physical, just on the couch and around my house not doing anything.”
Bouchard’s first comeback attempt in Beijing in October was quickly aborted. The intensity of competition combined with the heat and pollution left her dizzy and unable to complete her first match. After that, her eagerness to return gave way to a more measured, cautious regimen.
“I had to go really, really slowly, which is so hard for me,” she said. “I just want to jump on the court and be in the gym and do everything 100 per cent. One day back would be 20 minutes on the bike, and that’s it, and then monitor how you feel that night and the next day. It was a very torturous process, something I’ve never done before.”
Concussions are rare in tennis, so Bouchard followed protocols used more commonly by hockey and football players.
“Experiencing this, I can’t imagine what it would be like to be a football or hockey player,” she said. “Experiencing that, and then going right back out where easily it could happen again? Knock on wood, but hopefully this will never happen to me again.”
Symptom- free, Bouchard returned to play in the first week of this season, though still with her head in mind.
“I always monitor it, I’m always aware,” she said. “It’s just another thing right now I have to think about now, at least for the foreseeable future. In terms of that, I’m feeling OK. In terms of tennis, I don’t feel like I am where I want to be, but I’m so happy to be on the court and I’m so happy to be playing at a decent level, having some wins.”
Bouchard has sued the U.S. Open and U.S. Tennis Association for negligence in her fall, which she said was caused by a slippery substance on the floor where she fell. Her lawyer, Benedict Morelli, has said his client is due “millions and millions” of dollars for the loss of income from prize money and possible endorsements from the Open and subsequent tournaments.
Once known for her impatient drive for excellence, Bouchard now speaks of tempered ambitions.
“Because of this injury, because of this accident, I feel like I definitely changed a little bit my goals, at least for right now,” she said. “My No. 1 goal is j ust to be healthy and be able to go out on the court. But deep down, I know I have my dreams and my goals.
“When this happened, I wasn’t sure if I could play again — that’s more extreme — or if I could be at the same level, or achieve what I really want to achieve, which is winning a Grand Slam. I had no idea, and I still don’t know. Hopefully things will go OK, but for now I’ve definitely scaled back the expectations, the pressure.”
Bouchard borrowed from a fellow Canadian, the rapper Drake, to sum up what appears to be a resurgence.
“To quote Drake, I ‘ started from the bottom,’ ” she said, before laughing as she paused to contemplate the rest of the lyric. “I don’t want to say, ‘And I’m here,’ because I’m not here,” she said. “So, I started from the bottom, and I’m on the way to being here. But not quite.”