Healthy Bouchard getting plenty of practice in as pre-Wimbledon weather cooperating

WIMBLEDON – Genie Bouchard has never been the world's best practice player. So the fact that she struggled to win games against Turkey's Cagla Buyukakcay Sunday and Belgium's Alison Van Uytvanck Saturday must mean that a tournament is right around the corner.

The 22-year-old Canadian's mood remains sunny, though – just like nearly all of the competitors on site.

With the atmosphere at Indian Wells perhaps coming close with its player-friendly philsophy and, as at Wimbledon, many bring their families and live in actual homes or condos for the tournament period (and drive their own cars!), Wimbledon just exudes an "I'm so happy to be here" vibe from the players.

During the weekend before the main event begins Monday, the All-England Club remains surprisingly quiet. The last-minute touches are going on – more flowers planted, things getting painted, delivery trucks all over the place – but unlike many of the other tournaments, only a very few people other than those working on site are allowed in.

The setup doesn't allow for much practice-watching anyway, unlike the trend at some of the other tournaments. The main facility at Aorangi Park has, at most, six courts where people can see and TV crews and photographers can do their jobs; there are another dozen courts that are pretty much out of sight, including the court where Serena Williams worked out for two hours Sunday morning.

Here's what Bouchard looked like Sunday.

She finished off her day with a major Genie-bombing of countryman Vasek Pospisil's TV interview with TSN. The two traded some solid barbs, and are still joking about the fact that they missed the deadline to sign up for the mixed doubles at the French Open a few weeks ago.

They won't be teaming up at Wimbledon, with Pospisil focusing on trying to defend his quarter-final result from a year ago and put together another singles run. As well, he's playing the doubles with American Jack Sock (the two won it in 2014), and the men's doubles at Wimbledon inexplicably remains best-of-five sets. So that's already a lot of tennis; Canadian tennis fans will remember that day at Wimbledon a year ago when Pospisil played five sets of singles followed by five sets of doubles. It pretty much finished him.

So Bouchard is looking for a partner, mindful every time she walks by the sign in the locker room that the sign-in deadline is Wednesday at 11 a.m.. But she'll need to find someone with a pretty good singles or doubles ranking to squeeze into the draw.

Or maybe she already has someone lined up, and is just keeping things mysterious.

Bouchard will play Magdalena Rybarikova of Slovakia in the first round of singles Tuesday, so there is time for one more day of practice – assuming the weather cooperates. It appears it will. Tuesday looks to be somewhat more complicated.