Despite her struggles, Eugenie Bouchard will move up to No. 6 in the WTA Tour rankings next Monday

Given her struggles in 2015, most people are surprised that Canadian Genie Bouchard remains the No. 7 player in the WTA Tour rankings.

As of next Monday, she will move up to No. 6 despite the fact that by the next time she plays a tournament, it will have been nearly two months since Bouchard won a tennis match.

In fact, three of the four times Bouchard has risen above No. 7 in the rankings so far in her career, she didn't have to do a thing (the exception was after she reached the final in Wuhan, China last September, when she became No. 6 for a week).

If you're ready for some technical talk and some math, read on.

The WTA Tour rankings are a rolling, 52-week calculation, meaning that what you did in during a specific week rolls off the computer, replaced by what you did the same week the following year. Because Bouchard nearly matched her 2014 semi-final effort at the Australian Open with her quarter-final finish this year, she didn't lose a lot of ground there. During the first part of the 2014 season, she really didn't do much until she won her first career tournament in Nürnberg, Germany, the week before the French Open in mid-May. So she has held steady.

Meanwhile, Ana Ivanovic, who reached the final in Stuttgart last year, was beaten in the first round there Tuesday by Caroline Garcia of France. So it is Ivanovic's drop, not anything Bouchard did, that will lead to them switching spots in the rankings list the next time it's updated.

Bouchard moved up to No. 6 the first week of the 2015 season while she was playing in the exhibition Hopman Cup event in Perth, Australia (which doesn't earn the players any official ranking points), Again, that jump was courtesy of an Ivanovic failure to "defend" her 2014 points. At the time, Bouchard professed being less than wowed by the achievement, correctly pointing out that it wasn't because of anything she did.

The Canadian's career-high of No. 5, reached Oct. 20, 2014, was another computer anomaly.

Just as the WTA Tour finals in Singapore were kicking off, the WTA wiped the results of several tournaments off the computer well in advance of the normal cycle. Gone were the points any of the other players in the 2014 WTA Finals field earned there in 2013 (normally, those points are erased at the end of the tournament when the new results are added, not before it starts). Gone were the points earned by players who competed at a second-tier finals event held in Sofia, Bulgaria the week after the Tour finals. Also gone (as normal) were the points earned by some players the previous week at regular WTA tournaments in Moscow and Luxembourg.

China's Li Na, who had just retired, fell from No. 5 to No. 9; she made the Tour Finals the previous year. Ivanovic and Agnieska Radwanska also took a hit. Bouchard, who didn't qualify for the Tour Finals or the Sofia event in 2013, and lost in the first round in Luxembourg, stayed at exactly the same number of ranking points. But because of the others, she moved up from No. 7 to No. 5. By the end of the Singapore tournament, she was back down to No. 7.

In other words, it's just math.

Bouchard's status also has been safe so far because of how spread out things are at the top of the women's game. Serena Williams in in a class by herself; Maria Sharapova and Simona Halep are neck-and-neck for No. 2 and No. 3 - that one will play out in Stuttgart this week. Petra Kvitova is in her own space at No. 4.

But after that, it gets a little tighter. No. 5 Caroline Wozniacki is within reach for Bouchard and Ivanovic; indeed, Bouchard could have matched her career best No. 5 – easily – had she been able to do anything at Indian Wells and Miami.

No. 8 through No. 11 - Makarova, Radwanska, Suarez Navarro, Petkovic – are separated by less than 200 points top to bottom. They're at a disadvantage because players who qualified for Singapore last year earned points just for showing up. Bouchard, who was trounced in all three of her round-robin matches, still took home 210 ranking points for her trouble.

So that's the past and present. But what about the future?

Bouchard currently has 4,122 ranking points in the computer. More than half of them come from three tournaments last year – all of which are coming up: 280 points for winning the lower-level event in Nürnberg, 780 for reaching the French Open semi-finals, and 1,300 for reaching the Wimbledon final.

It's impossible to accurately predict her spot in the rankings, even if you knew her results in advance, because it also depends on other players' results. But let's start with the worst-case scenario.

If Bouchard were to lose in the first round of all three (heaven help her), her ranking (all other results being equal, and going by the point totals in this week's rankings), would be ... No. 28. If she were to make the fourth round (round of 16) at both the French Open and Wimbledon, she would (again, in theory) still remain in the top 20.

So when you really think about it, as worst-case scenarios go, it's hardly as dire as everyone is predicting. It isn't as though she would tumble off the face of the earth.

2015 PRIZE MONEY

On this list, Bouchard sits at No. 18. Ahead of her stand doubles specialists Martina Hingis and Sania Mira, just to give you an idea. Of that total, 76 per cent ($287,308) came from the Australian Open result alone. Other than that, Bouchard has earned less than $100,000 this season.

Now, the good news. There are other opportunities for Bouchard to soften the blow, earn points elsewhere to lessen the pressure a little.

Her next scheduled tournaments are the big Premier-level events in Madrid and Rome, where a lot of points are up for grabs. Since Bouchard lost in the first round of both events a year ago, anything she does there will help her cause.

On the downside, the fact that those are top-level events mean the draws are top-level, which means she will face very good opponents from the very first match. Her recent form indicates that even playing an opponent ranked, say, No. 30 in the world in the first round is no slam-dunk.

Also, Bouchard is not officially entered into Nürnberg, which is played the week before Roland Garros. So those are 280 points she can't defend. Why? Only she can know; certainly she has entered almost nothing other than the biggest events so far in 2015 and, where she has signed on for other events (Dubai, Monterrey), she has withdrawn because of injury.

if the Canadian is waiting for the Nürnberg tournament to come up with a wild card and an appearance cheque, she might wait awhile; all of the German women, many ranked in the top 20, are playing it. So the event doesn't need Bouchard as a so-called "marquee attraction" to sell tickets. (Plus, her track record under these circumstances is dodgy, at best).

In the end, a better measure of where Bouchard fits into the women's tennis firmament this season is her position in the "Road to Singapore" rankings. Those take into account only this year's results, and the top eight will again qualify for the year-end finals in Singapore.

THE ROAD TO SINGAPORE

In that race, the 21-year-old Canadian stands at No. 29.

But in the end, Bouchard remains, officially and for seeding purposes, the No. 6 player in the world as of Monday. Safe so far, now comes crunch time.

Perhaps that's one of the "external things" that have been taking away Bouchard's focus on the court, something she will have no choice but to try to put aside as she enters the most crucial portion of her season.