Exclusive: As she prepares for a comeback in 2016, Eugenie Bouchard looks in good form in Florida

BRADENTON, Fla. – By the time Canadian tennis star Eugenie Bouchard returns to the competitive match court early in 2016, it will have been nearly three months since her first attempted return from a concussion suffered at the US Open ended almost before it began.

This time around, the prospects certainly seem more promising.

Bouchard has documented a few setbacks on social media. But on Tuesday at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., she appeared healthy and in good form as she took the court both in the morning and the afternoon on a day when temperatures soared past 30C.

First, it was a two-hour practice session and a set with Belgium's Alison Van Uytvanck.

After a break for lunch, Bouchard returned for a hit with 19-year-old Gianluigi Quinzi, the former No. 1-ranked junior who won the boys' event at Wimbledon in 2013, the year after Bouchard won the girls' title.

Quinzi's father told Eh Game that Bouchard was his son's "idol", which is definitely out of the box but might help explain the young Italian lefty's early nerves as the session got under way. That session lasted nearly an hour and a half, after which Bouchard hit the gym.

How did Bouchard look? Well, it was practice, so there's no way of extrapolating how her form might play out in a competitive situation. And at her best, the Canadian has always played better when there was something actually at stake than she has in practice.

But she looked healthier than she had for much of 2015, when concerns about her shrinking silhouette had Bouchard diehard fans and many others talking.

She was striking the ball cleanly, powerfully. Her serve motion seemed simplified; it often looked that way during practice sessions in 2015 before getting hitchy and a little complicated during crunch time in matches, though, so it's too soon to determine whether those issues have been straightened out.

She certainly was looking for opportunities to take the net and finish off points, a tactic she lost sight of for much of 2014 and 2015. In 2014, she didn't need it; everything was going her way. In 2015, she had all kinds of trouble getting into positions during rallies where she could even create those opportunities, so it was a moot point.

Despite the potential ongoing effects of the concussion, suffered during a fall in the women's locker room at the US Open and currently the subject of litigation with the U.S. Tennis Association that could loom as a shadow over her entire 2016 season, Bouchard is already way ahead of where she was a year ago – at least from a tennis perspective.

At this time last year, having stumbled to the end of the season after the high point at Wimbledon, where she reached the final, Bouchard was without a coach. Unable to secure a replacement for longtime guru Nick Saviano during the short off-season – and therefore unable to really put together a plan to up the level of her game before a season in which all her rivals would see her coming a mile away – she traveled to Australia to begin the season with Diego Ayala, whom she termed a hitting partner and not a permanent solution.

After that came the hiring of a coach she didn't even know, the Frenchman Sam Sumyk. And we all know how that turned out.

This off-season, Bouchard's return has been overseen by experienced coach Thomas Hogstedt, a Swede who worked with Maria Sharapova for several years along with the now-retired Li Na of China, to name just two of his famous former pupils.

Hogstedt was in Asia with Bouchard on a trial basis in October, although they really only had a few days together. She withdrew from her first planned event, retired in the second set of her first competitive match in Beijing against Andrea Petkovic of Germany as the concussions symptoms returned, and called it a day on 2015.

It's now official; Hogstedt is her coach going forward. And in talking to Eh Game, he is hugely enthousiastic about Bouchard's talent and work ethic, confident that her best is yet to come.

A few more photos from Bouchard's afternoon session.

Hogstedt said she still needed to get a little stronger. And, of course, she still needed to shake off some rust from the months-long layoff. But it seemed clear that Hogstedt is already a positive presence on a team that sorely needed it.

Bouchard told Eh Game she was happy to get back to doing what she loved, having had a glimpse of life without tennis and missing the game tremendously. She declined a formal interview after consulting with her agent, saying through Hogstedt that per her lawyer's instructions, she wouldn't talk to the media until she officially began playing again.

When will that be? The Canadian has a full schedule leading up to the Australian Open. Her first scheduled tournament is a small event in Shenzen, China, which begins on Jan. 4. It's a 250-level WTA Tour event (the lowest tier) and is owned by her management company, IMG.

Next up, if all goes well, is another small event in Hobart, Tasmania the following week.

The reality of Bouchard's current ranking, which stands at No. 49, is that she can no longer gain direct entry into the larger tournaments. The other WTA Tour event the week of Hobart – the week before the Australian Open kicks off the Grand Slam season – is a Premier-level event in Sydney, Australia. The last player accorded direct entry into Sydney at the deadline was Germany's Sabine Lisicki, ranked No. 32. The situation the previous week, with the Premier-level event in Brisbane that competes with Shenzen, is similar.

Both Premier-level events offer far more ranking points than the smaller International level tournaments. And Bouchard certainly could use the points. But she would be relegated to the qualifying at those tournaments – always a crapshoot and, to be frank, a major comedown for a former top-five player.

Bouchard hasn't played in the qualifying at the WTA Level since she was the No. 1 seed in the qualifying draw at Dubai in Feb. 2014. That's a big-money tournament that attracted seven of the WTA's top 10, for which her pre Australian Open ranking of No. 31 left her barely out of the main draw. Before that, you'd have to go back to 2013, before her career hit the stratosphere.

Fully 40 per cent of Bouchard's current points total of 1,064 comes from her quarter-final appearance at last year's Australian Open. Those points will roll off the computer at the event's conclusion. She'll arrive in Melbourne as an unseeded player for the first time at a major since the 2013 US Open, and that means she could just easily draw Serena Williams or Maria Sharapova as she could a wild card or a qualifier in the first round.

If she were to go out in the first round, Bouchard likely would slip out of the top 100. And that would present an entirely new set of challenges.

But first things first; and the first thing is to get back on the competitive match court again, to play without recurrence of her concussion symptoms. It appears – at least to an outside observer – that Bouchard has done everything she can during the off-season to make that a reality. She has been practicing with no restrictions; Hogstedt said he's marveling at her work ethic, always wanting to do a little more.

And remember, for  years Hogstedt worked with the queen of work ethic, Sharapova. His standards are pretty high in that regard.