Lucas Pouille's rollercoaster ride enters Rome

One-hundred and five days. That’s how long Lucas Pouille had to wait for his next Tour-level victory after reaching his first Grand Slam semifinal at the 2019 Australian Open.

This past Tuesday, Pouille toppled 13th seed Borna Coric, 6-3, 7-5, to win their first-round encounter at the Mutua Madrid Open, snapping a six-match losing streak on the ATP Tour. He was defeated by Polish qualifier Hubert Hurkacz in the following round.

For Pouille, the past eight months have taken him on a roller coaster of emotions. Pouille’s ride has experienced moments that take your breath away–such as winning a five-setter over Roberto Bautista Agut in the Davis Cup semifinals and defeating Milos Raonic in the quarterfinals at Melbourne Park–and the twisting plunges that jerk you around–like leaving the Davis Cup Final trophy-less and receiving a masterclass on a Grand Slam stage from Novak Djokovic.

Following the Bautista Agut win last September, Pouille finished 2018 with just one victory in five matches. His year ended by losing in a must-win situation at home in Lille, France against Marin Cilic, whose triumph clinched Croatia’s second Davis Cup crown. A change didn’t come with a flip of the calendar either, as Pouille bowed out to Andrey Rublev in the opening round of Sydney to begin his 2019 campaign.

“Once the Davis Cup was over, I gave all I had [that] weekend, and I was a bit lost,” Pouille reflected in January. “I didn't really know what I wanted to do, if I wanted to practice, if I wanted to go holiday, anything. I didn't really enjoy my time on court.”

It was an arrival to the ‘Happy Slam’–a place that left Pouille anything but cheerful in his previous visits with five first-round exits–where the former world No. 10 restored his inner catapult. Thanks in part to strong execution on his return game and a secure state of mind with new coach Amelie Mauresmo, Pouille steadily picked up momentum. He battled past Coric to move into the quarterfinal stage at a major for the first time since the 2016 US Open, where he stunned Rafael Nadal in a final-set tiebreaker. Pouille then thwarted Raonic, who was heavily favored after knocking out Nick Kyrgios, Stan Wawrinka and Alexander Zverev, and had never surrendered a set to the Frenchman in their first three clashes.

“There was some low expectation[s] from outside of my team, even from myself. I was not expecting to do semis or quarters,” Pouille stated after besting Raonic. “I just wanted to take [it] step by step. The first goal of the tournament was to win the first match, and so on.”

Like a check brake being pushed, Pouille’s energy simply subsided. The blistering defeat to Djokovic, which saw the Frenchman claim a mere four games, knocked the wind out of Pouille. Each hill he approached was simply too steep to climb. The 25-year-old dropped his next three matches to players ranked outside of the Top 60, all in three sets, before finding himself drawing clay court stalwarts Wawrinka and recently retired David Ferrer to begin his swing on the European red dirt.

With six successive losses, Pouille decided to change tracks. The five-time ATP Tour champion entered the Bordeaux Challenger, his first appearance on the ATP Challenger Tour since March 2016 in Guadalajara. It nearly triggered warning lights, but after surviving 7-6 in the third against world No. 231 Pedro Cachin, Pouille began a mild incline. Next came a three-set win versus veteran Tommy Robredo and soon enough, Pouille had won five straight, culminating with a 6-3, 6-3 victory over Mikael Ymer for his first ATP Challenger trophy.

Whether those five victories in Bordeaux get Pouille back on the journey towards greater successes is yet to be determined, but if history is any indication, he’s capable of gaining speed at a moment’s notice. After getting through his preceding rough patch, Pouille expressed in Melbourne, “I took some time to think about myself, about my career, about what I wanted to do.

“I said, Okay, you have maybe 10 more years on tour. Do you want to spend them like this or do you want to enjoy it, enjoy playing on the biggest courts of the world in front of some unbelievable crowds, achieve some great goals, great titles? I said, Okay, now you have to move your ass a little bit and go back to it. Even if you don't want to practice one day, don't do it. Just do it when you want. That's how it came back.”

Pouille faces local favorite Matteo Berrettini in his Rome opener at the Internazionali BNL d'Italia.

(h/t to Nick McCarvel for inspiring further research on this story)