Bouchard turfs another coach
MONTREAL — For the second time in eight months, Eugenie Bouchard has fired her coach.
Bouchard, who is mired in a season-long slump that has seen her drop out of the top 10 to No. 25 in the WTA Tour rankings, has parted ways with coach Sam Sumyk. There were no reasons given for the split, although it’s clear Sumyk is the fall guy for Bouchard’s shortcomings this year.
On Friday, Bouchard announced she has hired a temporary coach, Marko Dragic, who will work with her at the Rogers Cup. She said she hasn’t made plans for “something more permanent right now.”
But it will take more than a new coach to sort out Bouchard’s career.
The 21-year-old from Westmount, Que., has multiple problems, and most of them stem from the fact she has forgotten why she emerged as an international celebrity last year. Success in the Grand Slam events last season — she reached the semifinals of the Australian and French Opens and the final at Wimbledon — landed her on the cover of the New York Times Magazine, with a headline that gushed “BIG SHOT: Eugenie Bouchard could be the future of women’s tennis. All she has to do is win.”
It’s that last part of the equation that has been lost on Bouchard. When she fired coach Nick Saviano last November, Bouchard also switched agents. She signed with the high-powered IMG/ WME, which has connections not only in sports but in the world of fashion and entertainment.
Bouchard expanded her endorsement base, signing deals with Coca-Cola and Cover Girl. She began talking about her “brand,” losing sight of the fact her brand is being a tennis player. All of Bouchard’s success flows from her ability to play tennis, and that part of her life is in shambles.
Firing Sumyk won’t work if Bouchard is using him as an excuse for her own failings. There have been suggestions that hiring Sumyk was a mistake because he’s left-handed. Of course, that ignores the fact Saviano — who guided Bouchard’s career from age 12 — is also lefthanded.
Another coaching change won’t work unless Bouchard dedicates herself to being better. The great athletes will tell you the secret to greatness is to constantly strive for a higher level. Bouchard and the people around her have to buy into that idea. It would be easy to be complacent after the breakthrough season Bouchard had in 2014, but as good as those results were she also lost her first match in 10 tournaments.
For seven or eight weeks in 2014, Bouchard was a top-10 player; for the remainder of the year, she was below ordinary. That trend has continued into 2015. As Bouchard heads into the Rogers Cup next week in Toronto, she has lost 12 of her last 14 matches. The mental toughness that marked her early career is missing. She appears to have lost weight and muscle tone — good for an aspiring model, but not for an elite athlete.
Changing coaches is often seen as a quick fix in team sports, but too often we see it’s the athletes who are at the core of the problem. It’s no different in an individual sport.
Bouchard’s future is in her hands and she has to decide whether she wants to be great, whether she wants to be remembered as the next Maria Sharapova or the next Anna Kournikova.
Sharapova pulled out of the tournament with an injured right leg on Friday.