In a close battle, Eugenie Bouchard is beaten by Elina Svitolina and eliminated from Cincinnati

When Genie Bouchard earned break points against No. 14 seed Elina Svitolina, her second-round opponent in the big WTA event in Cincinnati Wednesday night, she was diligent about converting them, making 4-of-6.

Her own service games were another matter.

After battling back when Svitolina served for the match at 5-3 in the second set, and saving three match points on her own serve late in that set, the 21-year-old finally succumbed 7-6 (6), 7-5 and ended her fledgling winning streak at one.

After numerous rain delays throughout the day, Bouchard and Svitolina finally took the court at 10 p.m. But they were no longer on Stadium 3, which is a TV court. Her army of fans couldn't watch this rematch of the 2012 junior Wimbledon final, which took place on an outside court.

In the three years since, the two have met just twice; Svitolina went 2-0 against Bouchard, both three-set battles.

Make that 3-0.

Bouchard began both sets well. In the first, she held, broke, and saved three break points on her way to an early 3-0 lead. But she couldn't hold on; the breaking wasn't as much of a problem as the holding of her own serve.

Bouchard was down in the eventual first-set tiebreak, then caught up to 5-5. She even had a set point at 6-5. But Svitolina won three straight points to take the hour-long first set.

The second set again began promisingly. Bouchard broke Svitolina to open it, but quickly was broken back. Svitolina broke her to lead 4-2 (the Ukrainian had 15 break points in all, converting five of them). Bouchard broke her back. Svitolina broke for a 5-3 lead and served for the match.

You guessed it; Bouchard broke her back, and saved three match points on her serve to even it up at 5-5.

Those were the last good moments. Bouchard saved another match point in the final game, but Svitolina converted in the end. And that was it – a see-saw battle in which Bouchard's serve, once her favourite shot, couldn't sustain her. She won just 55 per cent of her first-serve points to 71 per cent for Svitolina on her own first delivery.

What to take from it? Well, Bouchard didn't double-fault once in the first set (she had two in the second). By her recent standards, that's very good. Judging by her first-round win over Kateryna Bondarenko at least, she is hitting the ball with a little more authority than she did earlier in the season, making some of her higher-risk aggressive shots to get herself out of trouble.

Her ability to battle when she's behind will serve her well when she manages to reach that same level when she's ahead.

The Canadian plans to play the Premier-level event in New Haven, Connecticut next week, the last chance to put some wins on the board before the US Open.

The only top-10 players entered are Simona Halep of Romania and Petra Kvitova of the Czech Republic. But it's a quality field nonetheless; among the other scheduled participants are Svitolina, Belinda Bencic, Madison Keys, Ekaterina Makarova, Karolina Pliskova, Sloane Stephens and Camila Giorgi.

The rankings at the end of the Cincinnati tournament will determine the seedings for the US Open and, at this point, Bouchard will drop at least one spot to No. 25 (perhaps more, depending on how players like Stephens do - Jelena Jankovic squeaked by her with an impressive win over Keys Wednesday).

That one spot makes a big difference if she has any aspirations; players seeded 25-32 are slotted to face one of the top eight seeds in the third round.

That's premature, though. The main thing is that the last two weeks appear to have been at least slightly encouraging steps forward on Bouchard long road back.