Eugenie Bouchard’s fall from grace continued with a first-round defeat by China’s Duan Yingying as her hopes of repeating last year’s run to the final evaporated.
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She was expected to push on this year and challenge Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova for the grand slams, and the top ranking, but Bouchard has gone backwards instead, tumbling out of the world’s top 10. With the exception of reaching an ITF final on clay in Saint-Gaudens in May, Cepelova has failed to win back-to-back matches in 12 other events in 2015. Playing with a Grade 2 tear in her abs, against the advice of doctors, Bouchard threw away the first-set tiebreaker with yet another double fault and mis-hit backhand, eventually dropping the match on an unforced, netted backhand.
In 2014, Stephens never went beyond the last 16 in any of the four majors, lost in the first round seven times and ended the year at No. 37.
“Things aren’t flawless but maybe Wimbledon can revive me a little bit”, she added about her chances this year at the All England Club.
“So I did kind of minimal preparation to save myself for the match”, said Bouchard.
“Competitors must be dressed in suitable tennis attire that is nearly entirely white and this applies from the point at which the player enters the court surround”, the rules of the All-England Club state. What it has not included is many wins. My timing was very off. I said that I would go out there on one leg, so I had to be true to my word. ‘I play my style.
Eugenie Bouchard’s sliver of revealed black bra caused a stir at Wimbledon during her first-round loss.
Eugenie Bouchard picked up a dress code violation at Wimbledon today because her dark-coloured bra showed under her regulation-white outfit. “Allez!”, he said.
Wednesday’s (Thursday NZ time) match was not an unmitigated disaster for Bouchard. But although she reached the semifinals in Stuttgart and Rome, losing to Caroline Wozniacki and Carla Suarez Navarro respectively, Halep’s clay-court swing was still underwhelming, with a first-round loss to Alize Cornet in Madrid and a second-round defeat to Mirjana Lucic-Baroni at Roland Garros. She promptly ripped through the next service game to finish the victory.
Bouchard made it to the quarterfinals in Melbourne in January, but has now piled up eight straight first-round losses.
“I have to say “Sorry” to them” for such a short match, Kvitova joked. “That changes the way the court plays and the way the match plays out”, said Murray.
When those might come is unclear. But the Grand Slams just slap her in the face. Twenty-nine-year-old Rafael Nadal, injured most of last year and out of sync most of this one, needs to prove he can still contend on the game’s biggest stages.
It has been this way all year for Bouchard, even before the injury suffered two weeks ago at Eastbourne. “I’m very disappointed in my last couple of months …”
“I’m going to be looking forward to not having people ask me every single day about the points I have to defend”, she said.
She won’t be able to totally evade scrutiny, though. “You can’t do that at Wimbledon”. I’m just practicing hard and I’m going on court just to play the match.
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“It’s definitely been a tough time. I don’t think about results, and I don’t think about tournaments”.
