After a slow start, Eugenie Bouchard moves into the French Open third round

PARIS – Genie Bouchard looked completely out of sorts in the first set against Julia Goerges of Germany, and Goerges looked like the top-20 player she once was, not very long ago.

Then everything reverted to form, and Bouchard's 2-6, 6-2, 6-1 victory put her in the third round at the French Open.

For the first 40 minutes, if you didn't know better, you'd think Goerges was the world No. 16. She was solid, and served well while Bouchard sprayed quite a few balls and making nothing near her typical def-con impact on her opponent's second serve.

A break taken by Goerges after the warmup and before the start of the match, which the chair umpire told Bouchard was so the German could remove her leggings, probably didn't help, although Bouchard didn't make the connection specifically to her slow start than than to say the break was "very long" and she was "very cold."

"For sure it definitely wasn't one of my best days, but I'm proud that I was able to turn it around. It was definitely more of a mental win today to get my game back in the right place," Bouchard said.

Georges is currently outside the top 100, not because she's missed any time with injury, but quite possibly because she plays a lot of matches like this. After Bouchard took a "comfort break" to reset after that sub-par first, banishing the imposter to the locker room and bringing the real Bouchard back onto the court, Goerges reverted to the more recent version of herself.

She started making mistakes on relatively routine balls. And at the same time, Bouchard stopped making those mistakes. The result pretty much reflect the scores in the last two sets.

After little sign of any sort of Genie Army-type support during her first-round match against Shahar Pe'er – although two Hello Kitty stuffed animals from Japanese fans did appear at her first press conference – a Canadian flag appeared in the corner of Court 7 identified as such with the word "Namur" in black letters across the bottom.

We're going to assume it's the town in Belgium about 300 kilometres away from the 16th arrondissement, not the Montreal métro station about a 15-minute drive north of Bouchard's home in Montreal.

Bouchard's next opponent is a somewhat unexpected one; she'll play unseeded Johanna Larsson of Sweden.

On a day when both Venus and Serena Williams were sent packing from the tournament, Larson's win over No. 12 seed and Indian Wells champion Flavia Pennetta of Italy didn't really register much on the Richter scale. But it takes an accomplished, experienced clay-court opponent out of Bouchard's path for the next round.

NOTE: Sharon Fichman's partnership here with Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia paid immediately dividend Wednesday. The Canada-Russia pair upset the No. 9 seeds, Andrea Hlavackova and Lucie Safarova, 7-6(4) 3-6 6-1 in their first-round doubles match.