Eugenie Bouchard, Roland Garros semi-finalist in 2014, retired yesterday in the first qualifying round – whether she will find her old form again seems more questionable than ever.
When Genie Bouchard surprisingly made it to the Wimbledon finale four years ago, the state of emergency reigned once again at the Newspaper Boulevard in London. “Forget Maria, forget Serena. Here comes genius,” was the Daily Star’s headline about the beautiful, extremely capable Canadian. And the “Sun”, the flashy revolver paper, then headlined: “Golden Girl wins the hearts in Wimbledon. The genius era has begun.”
Czech Petra Kvitova then won the highest prize on the most famous of all Centre Courts, but Bouchard’s bright future prospects could not seem to have changed anything. “She’s a champion of the future. She will have a say in tennis for the next few years,” Martina Navratilova said on the BBC microphone.
Forecasts are difficult, especially when they concern the future, Mark Twain is said to have once said, the American writer. However, the error in the Bouchard case has a considerable effect. Because from her position of power in world tennis, even the leading position, nothing at all became for the 24-year-old Canadian, instead fans and experts experienced a creeping, unstoppable decline.
Until Wednesday, when Bouchard gave up her French Open qualifying match against Slovenia’s Dalila Jakupovic on an outdoor pitch at Roland Garros in Paris – supposedly because of an injury, but who knows exactly with the “fallen angel” (New York Daily News), who crashed to 167th place in the world rankings.
Bouchard’s failed career has long since called the mockingbirds and cynics onto the scene. Bouchard’s biggest success this year, tennis viewers made fun of on Twitter, was his recent inclusion in the famous Swimsuit Edition of the US magazine Sports Illustrated.
Comparisons with the Russian beauty Anna Kournikova were not far away either: Bouchard is something like “Kournikova 2.0”, it was said, her profession is more like “model” than “tennis player”. In any case: Bouchard is not only the target of poisonous criticism in the virtual world, but also a modern Internet phenomenon.
Instagram is followed by more than 1.7 million Canadians, far more than the current world number one Simona Halep or the two-time German Grand Slam winner Angelique Kerber. Only Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova have significantly more followers than Bouchard, who relies rather undisguised on lascivious motifs – sex sells, even if it is no longer true on the tennis court.
While Bouchard continues to play effortlessly in the top ten in the social media, even across the sexes, there has been gloom at the actual workplace for some time. The victory Bouchard experienced in spring 2014 almost seems a little unreal: victory at the premiere of the Nuremberg tournament, semi-final at the French Open, final in Wimbledon, leap to fifth place in the tennis charts – it was her moment, her big but fleeting time of sporting fame.
Later she made headlines mainly off the courts, as an Internet star “between reality and appearance” (The Guardian) and then also as the main character in a spectacular trial she led against the US tennis association USTA.
At the US Open 2015, the Canadian had slipped in a dressing room and suffered a concussion. Bouchard also justified the multi-million claim against the USTA with the fact that it has since fallen into a downward spiral and has never really recovered from the incident. Many in the tennis industry considered Bouchard’s actions, the trial at all dubious, but in February 2018 she was largely right – and awarded a million-dollar sum of compensation.
Bouchard then explained that she now wanted to return to the tennis court “relieved and happy”, it sounded as if the court ruling could create something of an initial spark. But Bouchard’s Instagram-Acoount didn’t show pictures of great victories, but the usual poses with lots of skin, sexy genius.
In 2016, after the US Open crash, Bouchard still held on well to the top 50, but in the season after that she was already scraping down to the magical hundred mark. Now the trend is towards 200 for an athlete whose professional seriousness even most colleagues doubt. “Pretty pictures, but nothing behind them,” says a top player from Eastern Europe, “she has her future behind her.
Many who talk about Bouchard in the industry then recall Petra Kvitova, the woman who won against Bouchard in Wimbledon four years ago. Kvitova was seriously injured in December 2016 in her apartment by a burglar’s hand, her career was really in danger. But after an energetic comeback, she’s back on top of the world league, and is now even considered one of the favourites in Paris and Wimbledon. At Grand Slam tournaments where Bouchard no longer even plays a minor role.