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After a second consecutive victory on Wimbledon's Centre Court, Eugenie Bouchard is into the third round
WIMBLEDON – Genie Bouchard has often said that she wants to look forward, not back in time to brilliant and terrible days both.
So we won’t refer to her 6-3, 1-6, 6-1 victory over No. 16 seed Johanna Konta of Great Britain on Centre Court at Wimbledon Thursday as “vintage 2016 Bouchard.”
“I think it’s the best match I’ve played this year. We really had good rallies, and I think the level of tennis was high,” Bouchard said. “My opponent, Johanna, has a really good game and I think she can be a really good player, I’m glad I was able to raise my level at the end.”
More than a throwback, it’s another step in the slow, gradual climb back to what might better be referred to as “top-level Bouchard.”
And now, after what she termed a “rest day” Friday, she will face familiar foe Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia in the third round.
The 22-year-old from Montreal said facing Konta was like looking in the mirror. “I felt, when we played, it was like playing myself a little. She takes the ball early and if I gave her a short ball, she attacked – right away,” Bouchard said. “You don’t get that feeling against players that aren’t quite as good. She sort of forced me to play better, to go for my shots a little more.”
In some ways, even though Konta is three years older, she’s experiencing a little of what Bouchard went through as she rose to the top of the rankings with a bullet.
Top-20 is not top-10, and Konta has yet to make a major dent at a Grand Slam the way Bouchard did in 2014 although she was a surprise semi-finalist at a topsy-turvy Australian Open this year.
But a year ago, she was a wild card who got a Centre Court date with Maria Sharapova and lost, 6-2, 6-2. A couple of weeks later, she was at the $50,000 ITF tournament in Granby, Quebec and came away with the title. She went from No. 147 to No. 47 in 2015 and now, halfway through the 2016 season, she’s in the top 20.
Thursday, the Aussie-born Brit was a seeded player at her home-country Slam, with a sought-after slot on the Centre Court schedule.
It’s a lot to process; Bouchard could tell her a few things about that.
“To have matches like these only add to the desire to keep getting better. I don't think I can quite describe how valuable these sorts of experiences are. I'm very grateful for them. I'm already just looking forward to being able to get out onto the match court again,” Konta said.
Perhaps it was coming back to the scene of so many career moments, being at her favourite tournament in the world. But the Bouchard on display in her first two matches at this Wimbledon was a step up from the first few months of the season.
It’s not necessarily the level of tennis, the shot selection, the improving composure – it’s a little bit of everything, all mashed together.
There’s a subtle sense that where over the last 12 months, even when she would get off to a good start in a match, she was almost waiting for the wheels to fall off. But there have been glimmers of progress in that area, then bigger rays of sunshine. This week, her demeanour has suggested she almost expecting a more positive outcome. That's a lot like 20.... er, never mind.
Bouchard could have flinched when first-round opponent Magdalena Rybarikova came so close to evening the second set of their match at 5-5 Wednesday night – after which, in recent memory, things would escalate. But she didn’t.
She could have let negative thoughts creep in after losing the second set 6-1 to Konta Thursday. But she didn’t. Instead, she made the adjustments she had to make, within the rather strict confines of her game style.
“I feel like in the second set I didn't play necessarily bad, but I think she raised her level. I think she cut back on a few errors and was even more aggressive. So I tried to be the one to do that in the third set,” Bouchard said. “Any short ball, any slower‑paced ball I gave her she would attack and give me no chance, which is what you have to expect against a top‑20 player. I focused on the third set to try and not give her any of those balls.”
As lopsided as the set scores look, the last two sets felt like anything but. Bouchard could have won in straight sets despite going down an early break of serve in the second set. She had Konta 15-40 on the Brit’s serve in one game, love-40 in another, but couldn’t convert. She didn’t do anything terribly wrong, either; Konta was just good.
Even in the third, it always seemed to hang on a razor’s edge in many of the games – yet suddenly, she was up 5-0. “Even in that final set, I believe maybe we had, you know, one game that was 15, I think every other game was (to) 30, deuce. It was a battle every single point. She was able to string together a few more points than myself,” Konta said. “She played very, very well. I really enjoyed being out there and competing.”
Bouchard said the same. With all the recent talk of playing every point, playing every ball and not looking ahead to the outcome, she appeared to do that. Bouchard served extremely well. She scrambled at a world-class level. She didn’t give up on any ball she had an even remote chance of reaching. She moved forward appropriately. Even in the many points where Konta appeared to be the one dictating, Bouchard ran and ran, scrambling to get one more ball over the net. And at the key moments, it was Konta who flinched – especially on her forehand side.
Better still, Bouchard said she enjoyed the battle. “It's more about just being so in the moment that, you know, it's almost I didn't want the match to end. I think it was good. I was enjoying myself out there.”
