Eugenie Bouchard pulls out of big Stuttgart tournament next week

The indoor clay-court tournament in Stuttgart, Germany next week (the winner gets a new Porsche, in addition to the big prize money) is a start-studded one; No. 1 Serena Williams, who is playing Fed Cup this weekend in Italy, was the only player among the top 14 not to enter.

Make that two, as Canadian star Genie Bouchard withdrew before the official singles draw was made on Saturday.

Stuttgart is one of the few tournaments beyond the biggest Premier mandatory events that Bouchard entered early in a schedule that, so far, has been fairly sparse.

Two weeks ago, she had chosen to play it and not Fed Cup, citing the demands of the WTA schedule as well as the travel and required changes of surfaces.

This weekend, it turns out to be the reverse. She has played Fed Cup, and is taking a pass on a prestigious WTA event.

Here's what she said.

It's a tough, tough field. If you take a hypothetical and look at the draw of the No. 6 seed in the tournament (which is what Bouchard would have been; after her withdrawal, the No. 6 is now Russia's Ekaterina Makarova), she would have faced former world No. 1 Jelena Jankovic in the first round and possibly Maria Sharpova in the quarterfinals.

The tournament's No. 7 seed, Agnieszka Radwanska, gets Sara Errani in the first round, possibly hard-hitting Sabine Lisicki in the second and then, on paper, world No. 3 Simona Halep in the quarterfinals.

It's a challenging 28-player field. And given Bouchard's form at the moment, probably not a tournament that would have been a good way to ease into her clay-court season.

The next two tournaments she's signed up for are even worse - big Premier joint events with the ATP, in Madrid and Rome.

Another alternative would be to take a wild card into one of the two smaller events the following week, in Marrakesh and a new event in Prague. But the Prague tournament is pretty loaded up with high-level Czechs, including  Lucie Safarova and Karoline Pliskova.

The only top-25 players at the Marrakesh tournament is No. 16 Flavia Pennetta. We can't picture Bouchard going to Marrakech, even though she has yet to play an international-level tournament this year and isn't yet signed up for one.

But in this season of constantly changing wind directions, expect the unexpected.