OVER AND OUT
No. 13 Raonic the lone Canadian left in singles tennis play
LONDON — Eugenie Bouchard’s four-match winning streak is over — and so is the Canadian’s run at Wimbledon.
The 24-year-old native of Westmount, Que., dropped a 6-4, 7-5 decision to No. 17 seed Ashleigh Barty of Australia in the second round of the grass-court tennis major on Thursday.
Bouchard, who won three qualifying matches to get into the main draw after seeing her ranking tumble to No. 188, led 5-2 in the second set against Barty and had one set point, but couldn’t pull it off.
“It was a couple tough games. I wish maybe at 5-3 I just took a little bit more time and focused on my serve to maybe try and put some better first serves in,” Bouchard said.
“But I was trying to be aggressive and she came up with some good shots, some tricky shots and that was to be expected as well, but I gave everything,” she added.
Later in the day, No. 26 seed Denis Shapovalov of Richmond Hill, Ont., was eliminated after dropping a 0-6, 6-2, 6-4, 7-6 (3) decision to Benoit Paire of France in second-round play.
Shapovalov also missed on a crucial set point that would have given him the fourth set and tied the match.
But Paire got out of trouble with a perfect lob to the baseline, and went on to win the set, and the match, in a tiebreaker.
“I had all the momentum after the first set and I blew that, and after that he played really well and I wasn’t able to play well,” Shapovalov said.
“I just have to look over the match again and do some brainstorming, find out why this keeps happening,” he added. “It was kind of the same story at the French Open. I had a lot of momentum going my way and all of a sudden it just slipped away from me.”
The results left No. 13 seed Milos Raonic of Thornhill, Ont., as the lone Canadian left in singles play. Raonic was scheduled to face Dennis Novak of Austria in the third round on Friday.
Bouchard converted on just
one of her six breakpoint opportunities, while Barty was good on three of seven.
“I think I played an opponent who is playing really well right now, especially on this surface,” Bouchard said.
“I think she has a great game for grass. So I knew I was coming up against something tough and I’m disappointed because I felt like I had chances in both sets and I think I played well but I know I can play better.”
The match featured two previous winners of the Wimbledon girls’ title — Barty captured the crown in 2011, a feat matched by Bouchard a year later.
Bouchard went on to reach the Wimbledon women’s final in 2014, while Barty hadn’t won a match in the main draw until this year.
While the struggling Bouchard is still trying to find a return to form, which fell off sharply after her breakout 2014 season, she is taking positives from advancing through qualifying and into the second round at the All England Club.
“I’m proud to be able to get some wins, especially right after the injury,” said Bouchard, who suffered an abdominal strain earlier this year.
“Like I said, it’s really hard to come back so that’s the big thing. But really just to play matches, I know I have so much I need to work on and you can practise all you want, but there’s nothing like real matches, so I’m just grateful to do my job and play,” Bouchard added.
It was a better day for Ottawa’s Gabriela Dabrowski.
The sixth-seeded women’s doubles team of Dabrowski and China’s Xu Yifan defeated American Alison Riske and Ukraine’s Olga Savchuk, 6-7 (5), 6-2, 10-8.
Meanwhile, Vancouver’s Vasek Pospisil and American partner Ryan Harrison lost, 6-4, 7-6 (8), 6-2, against the German duo of Philipp Petzschner and Tim Puetz in a first-round men’s doubles match on Thursday.
And in what will be his last competitive match at Wimbledon, Toronto’s Daniel Nestor and partner Jurgen Melzer of Austria were defeated, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4, by the eighth-seeded team of Austria’s Alexander Peya and Croatia’s Nikola Mektic.
The 45-year-old Nestor, who plans to retire after the upcoming Rogers Cup in Toronto, won back-to-back Wimbledon men’s doubles titles with Nenad Zimonjic in 2008 and ’09.