Eugenie Bouchard’s Indian Wells run ends with close loss to world No. 7 Simona Halep

INDIAN WELLS, Calif. – The fourth-round match between Eugenie Bouchard and Simona Halep at the BNP Paribas Open Monday morning was rife with contrasts and potential storylines, which did not go unnoticed by either of the lead actresses in the drama.

“Yeah, I just hear about her title wins all the time. She's definitely improved a lot. I think she's a really good, solid player,” Bouchard said in previewing the first-ever encounter between the two.

After Halep pulled out a 6-2, 1-6, 6-4 victory to move into the quarterfinals, the 22-year-old Romanian said that this particular win was very important to her.

The sub-text for Bouchard’s comment about the tournament titles goes to the essence of the WTA’s overzealous efforts to oversell Bouchard as the fresh, new, attractive blonde face of the WTA.

After her first match, Bouchard got the big room. After Halep’s first match, she got the small one.

The Romanian has risen in relative obscurity, save for those who really follow closely, to No. 7 in the world. That, despite the fact that she won six tournaments in 2013.

Six. And another this season.

Bouchard has yet to win one. And she’s ranked 12 spots behind Halep.

But The Canadian is definitely flying executive class on the WTA marketing jet and while Halep isn’t stuffed in next to the lavatory, she’s definitely not being marketed with the same, er, jet fuel. So it’s not surprising Bouchard gets some sense of that gap from the tennis folks out there who would rather discover their own new stars rather than have them imposed.

This first of what should be many clashes between the two was revealing on a number of fronts, even for those who wanted to pigeonhole it as a classic “attacker vs. retriever” matchup.

Halep already is more than a mere retriever. Bouchard is increasingly rounding out her skill set to become more than just an attacker.

“The other girl did a good job getting balls back,” said Bouchard coach Nick Saviano. Whether he just didn’t know her name, or was applying the Bouchard-Saviano plan to exclusively focus on her game without worrying about what the opponent on the other side of the net is doing, the savvy Saviano will probably never tell.

But Halep did do that, even though she said she was only at about 80 per cent and is still dealing with the effects of an Achilles injury.

After two rather lopsided sets – Bouchard went down 0-4, then 0-5 within the first 20 minutes – the 20-year-old from Montreal broke Halep’s serve at 3-3 in the third set and looked to have weathered the storm enough to be on her way to a potential semifinal down the road, given a favorable draw.

“Genie got tentative when she was ahead, stepped back a little bit,” Saviano said. “She got a little ahead of herself…”

Meanwhile, Halep stepped up the pace on her groundstrokes and broke back for 4-4. Then she held serve, and one of those points featured a 107-mph serve, perfectly placed to jam Bouchard right at the hip.

Serving to stay in the match, Bouchard was up 30-15 when she butchered a forehand swing volley, one of her go-to shots. Then, having delivered a day’s best 112 mile-an-hour serve, perhaps a little flustered by the fact that it came back nearly as fast, she overhit a forehand.

It was just a two-minute span in the match, and it was enough for Halep to squeak through.

Another notable contrast was that while Bouchard called Saviano to court for a consultation as many times as she was allowed under the rules, Halep did not call upon coach Wim Fissette (notably the longtime coach of Kim Clijsters) once.

And, even though Halep later said that she was incredibly nervous in the second set, her expression barely flickered throughout. The most demonstrative she got was to shake her head at one point, and pointing to it as if to tell herself to think out there.

Here's a sample of the contrast between the two:

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Halep also admitted that the bathroom break she took after the second set was really “just to relax a little.” It's a hard rule to enforce, that of really having a legitimate need to use the restroom. And so it's often used this way.

Bouchard, conversely, showed some of the angst-ridden body language she mostly left behind when she left the juniors.

But the more often she plays the best players in the world, the more Bouchard is going to find opponents who come armed with answers for her aggressive game. Part of her development will be to figure out solutions when it’s not happening.

Bouchard did get off to a sluggish start against Halep, but her opponent was keeping the ball deep enough that she would have had trouble attacking. And she was awfully tentative any time she tried to move forward. There’s a big gap between moving forward on balls that will come back weakly or not at all, and moving forward against an opponent who moves beautifully and will make you play something good for a first shot.

The key forehand swing volley Bouchard missed was hardly the only one she muffed on the day. She wasn’t moving in close enough, and she wasn’t pushing forward often enough.

“Yes, she was (tentative). And we know why. And we’ll work on that,” Saviano said. “We’ll just keep working. It’s a process.”

Another side benefit of this matchup, if indeed it does become a rivalry, is that both players – without sounding the least bit insincere about it – managed to praise the other.

As Saviano pointed out, Halep has two full years' of competitive experience over Bouchard. And, he added, that a year ago Bouchard was ranked more than 100 spots below what she is now. The work will continue in Florida for the next few days, in preparation for the big 10-day Miami event that follows this one.

For Bouchard, the last two weeks have righted the ship somewhat after a quick turnaround from the Fed Cup experience in Montreal straight to two big tournaments in the Middle East turned out to be a poor scheduling decision.

She won a couple of matches in Acapulco and justified her No. 18 seeding here.

She could have gone further. But she also defeated a top-10 player (Sara Errani) and nearly upset a second one in Halep.