Australian Open: Bouchard misses chance, but teen Fernandez makes draw
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA— It was in the shadows of the main show courts at Melbourne Park, days before the first Grand Slam tournament of the season is set to begin in earnest, and Eugenie Bouchard’s stay at the Australian Open was over in the last round of qualifying.
The 2014 Wimbledon runnerup, once as high as No. 5 in world rankings, has had a long slide down to No. 211. She’s had to get used to playing away from packed stadium courts, and a constant echo around the arena on Friday presented something new.
The 25-year-old Canadian survived nearly three hours against China’s You Xiaodi in heavy smoke and haze in the first round of qualifying and advanced through a secondrounder against Maddison Inglis in 65 minutes. With a spot in the main draw on the line, though, Bouchard lost 6-4, 6-3 to Martina Trevisan, a 26-yearold Italian who now will make her debut at a Grand Slam tournament.
“Super tough,” the native of Westmount, Que., said of the loss. “It’s last round of qualies. I felt like I was close.”
Bouchard lost seven straight games from 4-4 in the first set before she rallied and got back to 5-3 in the second, getting plenty of encouragement from a small but supportive crowd. Trevisan held her composure, though, and closed with an ace.
Bouchard said the changing wind and left-handed Trevisan’s different spin were tricky. And one distraction was just odd.
Every hit of the ball, every noise the players made, could be heard again a half-beat later. The echo — from a giant TV somewhere behind the arena — continued until match point.
“That’s never happened to me before,” Bouchard said.
Bouchard reached her careerhigh No. 5 ranking in 2014 after making the semifinals at the Australian Open and French Open and losing the Wimbledon final to Petra Kvitova. She made it to the quarterfinals in Australia in 2015. Now she’s trying to work her way back again.
“Well, life is not a straight line upward,” she said. “I just take the good with the bad. Sometimes you’ve just got to put your head down and grind, so that’s what I’m trying to do.”
Her short-term aim is just to keep trying to win matches back to back, following a drought last year when she had 13 straight losses, including first-round exits at the French Open, Wimbledon and U.S. Open.
Other qualifiers in the women’s main draw include Americans Ann Li and Shelby Rogers, Liudmila Samsonova of Russia, Monica Niculescu of Romania, and Canadian teenager Leylah Annie Fernandez, who beat
American Danielle Lao 7-5, 7-5 late Friday night.
Fernandez is the only Canadian women in the main draw.
The 17-year-old from Laval, Que., had defeated the 168thranked Mayo Hibi 6-4, 6-4 in the second round of qualifying. Despite committing 39 unforced errors in the match, Fernandez recorded 34 winners — 21 more than her Japanese opponent.
The Canadian teen is making her first Grand Slam appearance as a pro this week in Melbourne, Australia. She won her first-round qualifying match by upsetting Romania’s Patricia Maria Tig 6-2, 6-3 on Thursday. Tig was the seventh seed in the qualifying draw and ranked 113th in the world.