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Eugenie Bouchard's first-round Wimbledon loss: how it played

Late in the second set of her first-round loss on Tuesday, Genie Bouchard let out a play to her supporters, to no avail. (Stephanie Myles/opencourt.ca)

WIMBLEDON – Genie Bouchard left Wimbledon behind rather quickly, home in Montreal less than 24 hours after she crashed in the first round to qualifier Ying-Ying Duan of China.

Bouchard was on the 2 p.m. flight from Heathrow (Eh Game's got spies everywhere), with brother Will. She left behind a few headlines, but nothing nearly as heavy-duty as you would expect in a town full of tabloids.

In the end, fandom is fickle and they've moved on.

The Daily Mail played it straight, but did note the "bra flap" - the potential egregious breach of Wimbledon's all-white rule.

There did seem, indeed, to be a whisper of black sports bra showing. But chair umpire Louise Engzell took no action.

In all seriousness, if they're going to ding Bouchard for that, they should probably throw the book at this doubles specialist from India:

Pretty good chance Purav Raja was in startling violation of Wimbledon's all-white dress code with those Calvins. (Stephanie Myles/opencourt.ca)
Pretty good chance Purav Raja was in startling violation of Wimbledon's all-white dress code with those Calvins. (Stephanie Myles/opencourt.ca)

 The Telegraph said that last year, Bouchard was the "fragrant future", with "a stark beauty straight out of a book of optimistically illustrated fairy tales" but that 12 months later, Twelve months later, "all the fragrance and the fans counted for a knockabout nothing."

The Express wrote Bouchard "is on a perfectly miserable run of 12 defeats from her last 14 matches and this was perhaps her worst."

The Evening Standard ignored her.  

The Independent took the Kournikova tack, which is highly original.

"Anna Kournikova, remember her? She might just have come back as Eugenie Bouchard, another feted for her beauty and struggling to come to terms with the attention it brings.

Kournikova romped to the Wimbledon semi-finals as a 15-year-old poppet on debut in 1997. The world, we thought, was hers to inherit. Instead it consumed her, the celebrity and endorsements that came with all that arresting blondeness acting like breezeblock attached to the waist."

Well, at least they were poetic about it.

The Daily Star wins for headline of the day:

Punning is an absolute headline-writing must-have quality. (Daily Star)
Punning is an absolute headline-writing must-have quality. (Daily Star)

Closer to home, Bouchard didn't exactly get off lightly.

The Globe and Mail took a good chunk out of her.  The Toronto Star was a little more mellow, describing her path from "From 2014 runner-up to also-ran". The National Post was charitable.

Close to home, Journal de Montréal columnist Pierre Durocher speculates that he doubts Bouchard's association with coach Sam Sumyk will last much longer, and wonders if former coach Nick Saviano would agree "to take her under his wing again to teach her how to win again." (Saviano is coaching American Sloane Stephens).

The newspaper's reporter on site quotes famous tennis guru Nick Bollettieri as saying he honestly thinks she's not having the final say in her decisions and that if she lost her first-round match, we might not see her for a long time.

Here's a look back at the match. The start was delayed because a woman in the stands was overcome by the heat – and it wasn't even as hot as Wednesday's record-breaking day. Eventually they carted her down (rather clumsily) and out of Court 3 on a portable chair.