This Genie’s back out of the bottle
There are still flaws, but Bouchard fights way to fourth round
NEW YORK— Well, hey — there you are, Genie girl.
And here you go, once again into the round of 16 at a Grand Slam event.
Not hardly the dynamo of a year ago, in the same venue where the jumbo and perplexing slide began for Genie Bouchard in 2014. In those halcyon days, the fourth round of a major and no further was considered a disappointment. But nobody knew then the litany of bummers that lurked straight ahead.
Now, surviving into the pre-quarters bracket feels like a monumental achievement, a glimmer of resurrection at the end of a long, dark tunnel.
It is an incremental process, emerging from the mess of a spectacular Year Two stumble. But this is as good a place to start, in front of a kind audience that still yearns to fawn over their golden girl.
It was not a thing of beauty, though, Friday evening at the Louis Armstrong Stadium, where the 21-year-old Canadian waged an error-strewn dance to the death with Dominika Cibulkova, a match neither seemed competent to put away through a slew of dueling deuces — back and forth to neutral ground: seven times at 40-40 in a 12-minute game in the second set, eight times to deuce in Game 4 of the third frame, wherein Bouchard ultimately broke the Slovakian, a key juncture of the two-hour, 48minute encounter. Felt a lot longer, believe me. It was so exhausting to Bouchard that she sat sprawled in her chair afterwards, long limbs splayed every which way, and she suggested to the court interviewer who approached with a microphone: “Can we do the interview from here?’’
The result was 7-6 (9), 4-6, 6-3 to the good, from a Canadian perspective, even if the tennis, with its avalanche of unforced errors, was, let us say, un-stellar.
“I can’t feel my body,” Bouchard moaned. “I don’t really know what’s going on but I’m happy.”
Genie’s Army, well represented here throughout the tournament, will doubtless prostrate itself at the altar of happy, relieved, as so clearly is Bouchard, that yet another major won’t end in ashenfaced lament. This is two years in a row she has reached the fourth round at Flushing Meadows and maybe Bouchard, the It Girl of the 2014 campaign, is finding her game once more.
Not the “A” game but B-minus was sufficient to set aside the glowering, grunting and, it appeared for quite a while, more got-game of the combatants. Cibulkova was an unseeded commodity — Bouchard is No. 25 — but she was cut-throat in her two previous matches, ousting seventh seed Ana Ivanovic in the first round and then polishing off Jessica Pegula, one of 47 American females bringing up Serena William’s bodacious rear. (That’s only a slight exaggeration.)
The stubby Cibulkova is built like a brick outhouse and accompanies every serve with a weird utterance that sounds like a sneeze: AH-SHEE! The audio could not compensate, however, for that errant serve — a mere 52 per cent of firstservice points won in the third set — and five double faults in crucial situations.
Cibulkova had her own breakthrough last year, advancing to the final of the Australian Open, knocking off Maria Sharapova and Agnieszka Radwanska en route, and clawing her way up the WTA rankings to No. 50 currently, well behind the pony-tailed ingenue passim from Westmount, Que. With her ferocious demeanour, however, the 26-year-old Cibulkova looked at times like she could have Bouchard for breakfast, with sausage links on the side.
The women, in their first-ever meeting, exchanged first-set breaks and Bouchard was trailing, serving to stay in the frame, when she was gifted a hold because Cibulkova couldn’t kill a smash just hanging there, blasting it into the net instead. Bouchard went up 3-0 quickly in the tiebraker before she started clobbering balls long and wide. An ace — there would be half-a-dozen in the match — brought her even, an aggressive winner into the opposite corner hauled her up again, followed by a volley Cibulkova couldn’t reach and another error by the Slovak. Bouchard won the tiebreaker 11-9.
Cibulkova seemed to Zen zone out whilst awaiting the second set, closing her eyes and perhaps communing with the god of the 10-foot high net. Something did her good as she prevailed 6-4 despite converting only two of 11 break opportunities.
Meanwhile, Bouchard punted her sun visor. Which, fortunately, was not on her head at the time.
Bouchard did manage to close it out in the third, with some luck kicking in.
Afterwards, she admitted: “When I re-watch this match, I’ll have a heart attack just watching all these set points.”
Next up in an underside left wide open because of seeds picked off and injury retirement is Italy’s Roberta Vinci, who beat Bouchard 6-1, 6-0 at on Open tune-up last week in New Haven. But we won’t go there right now. And Bouchard, with just two hours to re-charge, headed for her late night mixed doubles match alongside the Oi from Oz, Nick Kyrgios.