Two wins in a row as Eugenie Bouchard reaches the quarter-finals in Shenzhen, China

For much of 2015, there was no such thing as a "routine" match for Canadian Genie Bouchard.

Even qualifiers and players ranked far lower seemed to pose a threat – a contention borne out by the list of relatively benign opponents she lost to during a difficult sophomore season.

But on Wednesday in China, in first real comeback tournament after suffering a concussion at the US Open last September, Bouchard posted a routine 6-4, 6-2 victory over American qualifier Nicole Gibbs.

Coupled with a 6-4, 1-6, 7-5 win over Croatia's Donna Vekic in the first round on Tuesday, Bouchard now finds herself in the quarter-finals of the Shenzhen Open, to face unseeded Timea Babos of Hungary.

Bouchard was broken in the very first game, even though she found the court with all of her first serves until the break point. But she broke right back. And with some help from Gibbs, a 22-year-old ranked No. 109 who starred at Stanford University before turning pro at Wimbledon in 2013, she rolled.

Gibbs double-faulted to give Bouchard the first set. And in the final game, she double-faulted twice more to get Bouchard to the finish line.

In between, there was much to like about the way Bouchard played and competed.

She served at 73 per cent in the first set. In the second, that dropped to 52 per cent, but she was more effective on second serve, and she didn't face a break point.

Here are the stats for the match, as charted by Eh Game.

The ratio might not seem favorable, but Gibbs hit very few winners and made more errors.

And the key is to examine the nature of the errors. There were only a handful of wild, unbalanced swings; for the most part, Bouchard didn't miss by much. And the return errors came as the Canadian was trying to be aggressive – again, not missing by much most of the time.

The second serve, so often shaky the previous 14 months, was solid and Bouchard's serve technique, which had developed hitches through her struggles, stayed consistent and fairly clean throughout.

She didn't go after every ball with the intention of trying to finish the point. She attacked appropriately; all of the swing volley winners were routine ones, created by consistent, deep groundstrokes. There were times when she was in trouble and just needed to get the ball back into play and, more often than not, she did just that.

If it wasn't quite the Genie Bouchard of old, it was a reasonable facsimile although, despite the inevitable fan excitement, she wasn't facing a player who has her level of game.

Babos, another 22-year-old, was once a promising junior who reached as high as No. 2 in the ITF rankings. She reached the Australian Open junior doubles final in 2010 with Bouchard's Davis Cup teammate Gabriela Dabrowski, and swept the other three junior majors with American Sloane Stephens.

On the WTA Tour, the Hungarian has posted better results in doubles than singles  (ranked as high as No. 8 in doubles in the WTA Tour back in June, and the holder of 10 career titles, she is currently ranked No. 70 in singles).

She's a powerful hitter with good all-around skills, but lacks the consistency to take the next few steps. But she should pose a bigger challenge.

With No. 2 seed Petra Kvitova out of the tournament with a gastrointestinal illness, Bouchard now has a tantalizing road to the final in her first full event back.

On Tuesday, it was also announced that Bouchard would play the Rio Open, a joint ATP-WTA event in Brazil to be held the week of Feb. 15. That's the time of the WTA season for the big tournaments in the Middle East; but the ranking cutoffs in Doha and Dubai are so high that the Canadian wouldn't be able to make the cut given the current state of her ranking.

In Rio, barring last-minute wild cards, Bouchard and home-country favourite Teliana Pereira are the only top-50 players entered – and even then, they're barely in the top 50.

The potentially positive news there is that Rio is not the week directly after the Fed Cup tie against Belarus, which will take place in Quebec City the weekend of Feb. 6-7. There is a week in between, for those on Bouchard Fed Cup watch.

The Canadian hasn't committed to play the tie; then again, she hasn't said anything about anything thus far in 2016.