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One day after an encouraging win at Eastbourne, Eugenie Bouchard retires against Belinda Bencic
The last point of Eugenie Bouchard's stay in Eastbourne was a weak double fault, halfway up the net, at 70-something miles an hour.
It was the 12th straight point she had lost in the second set against Belinda Bencic of Switzerland, after losing the first set 6-4 despite some good flashes of play. In that second set, she was a completely different player, slashing at the ball without any plan and serving poorly.
She trudged to her chair and called for the trainer for an abdominal injury; coach Sam Sumyk, sitting right behind her, told her that if it hurt, she should stop.
After a cursory examination by the WTA Tour trainer, the 21-year-old Canadian did just that, retiring at 4-6, 0-3 - immediately putting into question the prospects of a good run at Wimbledon.
Bouchard told the media afterwards that she began feeling the injury during the first set, but that she fully intended to play next week.
"I'm going to play no matter what, even if I'm on one leg," she said. "I kept trying and trying. I mean, at the end it was hard for me to put a serve in, just because I felt that pain a little bit. It just wasn't smart for me to take a risk, and potentially be out for a long time. It's something I want to kind of take care of right away."
Just 24 hours before, Bouchard and her legion of fans had reason to hope. It wasn't just that she won her first match of the grass-court season, but more in the flashes of vintage 2014 Bouchard shown during a straight-sets win over American Alison Riske. In her on-court interview afterwards, she even sounded a little bit like the Bouchard of old, matter-of-fact about what was actually a pretty positive moment in a 2015 season that has seen precious few of them.
But suddenly, the pressure might have been on again. Other upset losses and withdrawals left the Canadian as the highest seed remaining in the Eastbourne draw, on paper the new favourite to take the title.
The abdominal issue is nothing new; it seems to be part technical, part the physical manifestation of her stress level.
The last time it cropped up was during her drama-filled match against qualifier Lesia Tsurenko at Indian Wells in March, a match she later said was probably the toughest in a tough season. She said at the time that the emotions had gotten the better of her both during the match and in its aftermath.
But even that wasn't the first time. In story your Eh Game correspondent wrote for the Toronto Star last month, former Bouchard coach Yves Boulais said he had seen it all before.
“She was forcing enormously on the serve, and that’s why she was hurting her abs at the time. I was trying to get her to be much more relaxed. She bends at the belly quite a lot at impact, which makes her serve lower, and erratic. You see her serve right now and it’s right back to where it was (then)," said Boulais, who worked with Bouchard during her run to the 2012 junior WImbledon and into a successful summer in the pros in the wake of that big victory.
“Genie forces a lot, tries to dominate, I feel the emotions behind it. But what happens is you lose your timing and instead of going forward, you go backward, even though you’re working harder,” he said.
Bouchard must defend a finals appearance from a year ago at Wimbledon, or risk losing serious ground in the rankings.
It's too soon to tell what the effects will be; she said she wouldn't serve for a few days as she tried to get it as right as it can be.
