The Bouchard Blues

“Why did I even play this tournament?”—Eugenie Bouchard, to her coach Nick Saviano after losing the first set of her second round-robin match at the WTA Finals to Ana Ivanovic, 6-1.

Ivanovic’s 6-1, 6-3 win over Bouchard today in Singapore provided a vivid commentary on just how far the Serb has come in her rebuilt career—and perhaps just how far Bouchard will have to go to become comparably poised, professional, and comfortable with herself.

Ivanovic once walked—okay, ran—in more or less the same shoes Bouchard wears today. A 20-year-old from Francophone, Quebec, Bouchard has rocketed to No. 5 in the rankings, largely because of her outstanding results at the first three Grand Slam tournaments of the year (two semifinals plus a Wimbledon final). She hails from a nation that has long been a tennis backwater, but the folks in Canada love her. Bouchard also has plenty of sex appeal, which has already transformed her into a marketing dynamo.

Does anyone remember Ivanovic in those happy and halcyon days in 2008, when she struck the first major blow for Serbia by winning the French Open and capturing the No. 1 ranking? Her talent, combined with her girl-next-door charm, catapulted her to fame and fortune. But by the end of 2011, she was a star adrift. She fell out of the Top 25, struggled with confidence, and cried herself to sleep on more than one occasion.

You have to wonder if Bouchard isn’t destined to undergo a similar wake-up call, for she seems to be in the throes of rebellion against all that is now expected of her. And her situation will only become more challenging next year, when she has all those points to defend.

If this is an unraveling, it all started when Bouchard was on the cusp of being crowned homecoming queen in Montreal. She hadn’t hit a ball in competition after her Wimbledon run, and that may have been a strategic error, for she was beaten in the first round in her hometown event by qualifier Shelby Rogers by the shocking score of 6-0, 2-6, 6-0. It was nothing less than an unmitigated disaster.

There, she reportedly made a confession to Saviano almost identical to the one quoted above, saying she would rather be anywhere else but in Montreal. Bouchard did recover somewhat, to make the recent Wuhan final (where, like at Wimbledon, she lost to Petra Kvitova). But she seemed to feel the pressure and shut down the dampeners again today.

Going into this match, the higher-ranked Bouchard was clearly the favorite, having won their only two previous meetings, both this year (an Australian Open quarterfinal and a fourth-rounder at Wimbledon). It had to hurt Ivanovic to see yet another youngster threatening to overtake her. That’s why today’s performance must have been enormously gratifying for her. More than that, though, it was a testament to the diligence and patience with which Ivanovic has made her way back into the land of milk, honey, and Gatorade.

Ivanovic, who speaks in machine-gun like bursts oblivious to beats or punctuation, is anything but scattershot in her game. In fact, she radiates discipline. Her game is no less chaste and understated than her persona, despite the sting in her forehand and her excellent all-around mobility. Her game is like the proverbial rock shaped over ages by the flow of water, a proof of how hard she has worked and how assiduously she has practiced. The only unstable element is her serve, and much was made in today’s commentary on Tennis Channel about her wayward toss.

If you saw the movie "The Bear" you will remember how comically the little cub tries to catch butterflies. Ivanovic looks a little like that on some of her first serves. Her toss is way out front, and way out to her right, causing her to lunge and practically sidearm the ball into play—or the net. That toss is so striking, and always bad in so much the same way, that I have to wonder if it isn’t actually close to how Ivanovic really wants to hit it. Perhaps she’s trying to maximize the degree to which she can swing her serve out wide, which of course would be swerving away from a right-handed player.

As lopsided as the score was, there were rays of hope, albeit quickly extinguished ones, for Bouchard. She did have a break point in the very first game (and not another until the last game of that set, when it was too late), and she forced an eight-minute game when she was returning down 0-2. With the head-to-head advantage, who knows what might have happened had she not fallen so far behind, so quickly? After all, Ivanovic has been prone to freezing up, especially on the bigger stages.

But once the No. 7 seed survived the early threats and built a 4-0 lead with her second break, it was clear sailing until Ivanovic was broken in the second set for 1-1.

From that point on, it seemed that Bouchard was slowly but surely finding her way back into it. Serving with the score 3-3, Bouchard fell behind 15-40. But she wiped away the two break points with crisp, penetrating placements. There commenced a tug-of-war in which Ivanovic would fail to convert three more break points, leaving the impression that if Bouchard could only escape the jam, it would be the equivalent of hitting the reset button on the entire match.

But following a pretty forehand service return winner that gave Ivanovic her sixth break point, Bouchard presented her with the break, and probably the match, with an ugly double fault.

Although Bouchard has another singles match in this round-robin stage—against Serena Williams—she has no chance to win the tournament. Her year effectively ended on that double fault; let’s hope it’s not as ominous as it looked.